Reimagining Tourism Futures: Six Priorities Shaping the Sector’s Transition - By Dr Carlos Martin-Rios

Why It Matters

The agenda provides a unified roadmap for stakeholders to align investments, policy and innovation around systemic sustainability, crucial for maintaining tourism’s economic relevance amid climate and regulatory pressures.

Key Takeaways

• Six research priorities guide tourism's sustainable transition.
• Climate and mobility focus on low‑emission travel patterns.
• Food circularity promotes regenerative sourcing and plant‑forward menus.
• Social and work priority tackles skills, inclusion, AI impacts.
• Governance, measurement, and business models need systemic coordination.

Pulse Analysis

The tourism and hospitality sector stands at a crossroads, confronting climate volatility, shifting traveler expectations, labor shortages and rapid digitalization. In November 2025, EHL Hospitality Business School gathered scholars and industry leaders for the “Imagining the Future in Dark Times” workshop, a forum designed to move beyond incremental fixes toward systemic resilience. Participants recognized that isolated initiatives cannot address the intertwined risks facing destinations, supply chains and workforce structures. This realization has spurred a coordinated research agenda that treats tourism as a complex adaptive system rather than a collection of independent services.

The resulting white paper outlines six interlinked priority areas: Climate & Mobility, Food & Circularity, Social & Work, Governance & Policy, Measurement & Assessment, and Business Models & Management. Each domain targets a core lever of sustainability—reducing emissions through shorter, low‑energy travel; redesigning food procurement toward regenerative, plant‑forward sourcing; upskilling and inclusive labor practices amid AI adoption; establishing coherent policy frameworks; deploying absolute‑impact metrics; and reimagining value creation that aligns profit with societal well‑being. By mapping these themes together, the paper highlights how progress in one area amplifies outcomes across the others, encouraging holistic strategy development.

Industry players such as Nespresso, Six Senses and MSC Cruises already signal a shift from operational tweaks to strategic transformation, emphasizing data transparency, cross‑sector partnerships and long‑term asset planning. The white paper serves as both a research roadmap and a strategic scorecard, urging companies, governments and academia to collaborate on measurable, low‑impact solutions. As regulatory pressure mounts and consumer demand for responsible travel grows, organizations that embed these six priorities into their core business models will be better positioned to capture emerging market opportunities while mitigating systemic risks.