Where Will You Place Your First Needle?
Using Camiguin Island in the Philippines as a living laboratory, Mahe Besson explores regenerative tourism through the metaphor of acupuncture: small, precise interventions that unlock a destination’s own capacity to heal. Rather than rebuilding systems from scratch, she argues for carefully chosen “acupuncture points” such as teaching resorts, youth ocean programs, and co-created (un)Summits that let local ecosystems and communities regain...
Last September I joined a small team with a big dream: transforming Camiguin Island in the Philippines into a living model of regenerative tourism. So far, our journey has been filled with more questions than answers. What does regeneration mean in the tourism context? How do we practice it? What does it take for an entire destination to become regenerative?
These questions alone can feel overwhelming. Add to that existing patterns, entrenched power structures, and economic pressures, and meaningful system-wide change can seem impossibly distant. On Camiguin Island, home to just 100,000 people, these challenges are strikingly present. In our conversations with local hospitality providers, we keep bumping into the same primary concern: making ends meet. We believe many change makers in the tourism industry worldwide face similar tensions.
The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Sustainability Edition
The HYB 2026 The Regenerative Question: What Hospitality Must Become tackles regenerative hospitality's fundamental tensions. Moving beyond sustainability buzzwords, contributors will explore three perspectives: purists advocating holistic living-systems approaches; realists demanding measurable frameworks for accountability and scalability; and strategists seeking pragmatic balance between transformation and implementation. This edition serves as a critical forum to interrogate the divides, identify synergies, and define actionable pathways forward. By convening industry experts, researchers, and entrepreneurs, we transform contested concepts into constructive dialogue and, ultimately, clarifying what regenerative hospitality authentically is and isn't.