You are responsible for the P&L. Who is for the aquifer?

Ask a hotel manager what they are responsible for and the answer is clear: the team, the guest, the numbers and perhaps the asset as well, depending on the set up.

Ask who is responsible for the aquifer, the reef, the forest, the labour market or the town, all the elements that make the travel to it worth it, and the answer thins out fast. That gap is where regeneration starts.

Regeneration does not promise that hospitality will work out. It asks what a place needs to thrive on its own terms, and only then whether hospitality and tourism have any business being part of that answer.

To all that are worried about this premise, don't be – this is not an invitation to leave the room but rather a statement about where risks have moved. None of what I mentioned above appears on the balance sheet until it is too late. What I mean is that if the aquifer fails, well, then the asset fails. If the reef bleaches, room rates will drop. None of this appears on a balance sheet until it is too late to price.

That argument runs through The Routledge Handbook on Regenerative Tourism and Hospitality, published by Routledge which I co-edited with O'Shannon Burns (Cornell University) and Jonathon Day (Purdue University). We have 41 chapters, six of them interviews, from over 75 contributors across every continent: academics, practitioners, operators, community leaders, architects, biologists, behavioural scientists and Indigenous knowledge holders.

The premise is uncomfortable and we state it plainly: while most try their best, many destinations continue to degrade. The failure is not awareness; it is probably design and incentive. If we make every hotel twenty percent more efficient and we double the number of hotels, the planet does not care about our efficiency ratio. Let’s remember that this entire sector often reports falling impacts on a per guest/per night metric, for example, while the total impact rises via an aggressive growth model. Intensity is not the same as impact but we report the result as progress, but is it?

The book does not answer the question. Several chapters argue that regenerative approaches risk reproducing colonial patterns, enabling greenwashing, or failing outright on economics. As editors, we argue that a concept that cannot survive its own critics is then a mere marketing exercise, and we have had enough of those.

What is usable and relevant: chapters on business model transformation, natural capital accounting, circular supply chains, destination governance, and what it actually takes to hand decision rights to a community rather than consult it after the fact.

Regeneration will not make anyone comfortable. It does put the better question on the table: what would this place need from us, if anything, to be better off for our being here.

Link for more information: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-on-Regenerative-Tourism-and-Hospitality/Legrand-Burns-Day/p/book/9781032977515