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Blog (All Blogs) - Acorn Tourism

  • Which sustainability certification should tourism businesses choose?

    Which sustainability certification should tourism businesses choose?

    Read time: 3 mins

    Tourism businesses are facing increasing pressures to conduct their activity in a sustainable way to reduce their impact on the planet and contribution to climate change or biodiversity loss. A sustainability certification for tourism businesses can help provide structure and guidance with clearly defined steps to take to achieve these sustainability goals.

  • How to use marketing to tackle sustainability issues?

    How to use marketing to tackle sustainability issues?

    Read time: 3 mins

    Tourism often plays an important role in a destination’s economic development, bringing in visitors to spend money in local businesses, inward investment to develop infrastructure and providing jobs for residents. However, managing a destination sustainably is not an easy task. Tourism, if not planned and managed appropriately can become destructive – over tourism, degradation of the environment, loss of culture, disruption of local community’s lives, seasonality, etc.

  • How to use social media to grow your business?

    How to use social media to grow your business?

    Read time: 1 min

    Social media has become an incremental part of any business’ digital marketing strategy. With a constantly growing number of users, social media is a convenient and cost-effective way for a business to reach the market, engage with consumers and grow.

  • Sustainable destination management, where should you start?

    Sustainable destination management, where should you start?

    Read time: 1 min

    Sustainable destination management is as much a necessity as it is challenging. A destination is a very complex ecosystems composed of multiple stakeholders that can sometimes have competing interests. Organisation, cooperation, collaboration, consideration of all stakeholders and effective systems for measuring and monitoring are essential. Sustainable destination management is not a target to achieve, it is a journey and ever evolving. A destination can never truly be sustainable, but some are getting pretty close! 

  • Our journey towards carbon neutrality

    Our journey towards carbon neutrality

    Read time: 2 mins

    Most individuals and businesses are becoming more aware of their carbon footprint and mindful that emissions should not creep back up to pre pandemic levels. At Acorn Tourism, we’ve been trying to work out how we can make our operations carbon neutral.

    The journey has not been simple…

  • Tourism impacts residents quality of life: here’s what you can do.

    Tourism impacts residents quality of life: here’s what you can do.

    Read time: 1 min

    Monitoring inhabitants’ satisfaction has been identified by global sustainable destinations management standards as one of the essential guidelines to follow when working towards a more sustainable tourism industry. The local community is likely to be the one that suffers rather than benefits from tourism activities when their needs are not considered in tourism development.  Tourism activities are likely to disrupt residents’ quality of life: more traffic, less access to the city centre due to higher prices, etc.

  • How to become a sustainable destination?

    How to become a sustainable destination?

    Read time: 2 mins

    Managing a destination sustainably is not an easy task, and there are various threats and challenges that destinations are increasingly facing.  And carbon offsetting and planting trees will, unfortunately, not be enough.  From threats linked to climate change and increasing GHG atmospheric concentrations to challenges related to the wellbeing of the population and visitors, the management of waste, energy, water but also culture and heritage, and the engagement of local businesses, it can sometimes be challenging to identify the next steps a destination should take.

  • 20 years later… what has changed?

    20 years later… what has changed?

    Read time: 3 mins

    On the 10th of January 2002, Alison Burgh and Kevin Millington created Acorn Tourism Consulting Ltd. In 20 years, the tourism industry has evolved dramatically, our work has significantly changed, but the people that we have met along the way have remained as inspiring and resilient!

  • What is the Green Destinations Top 100 Stories?

    What is the Green Destinations Top 100 Stories?

    Read time: 2 mins

    The Green Destinations Top 100 Stories is an annual competition launched in 2014 to help destinations at different stages of their journey towards sustainable and regenerative tourism. The Top 100 is an effective tool for every destination, whether they are looking to learn more about reporting and communicating sustainability, wanting to establish themselves as an industry leader by sharing an innovative project implemented, or looking for an achievable yet ambitious first step to learn more about destination sustainability guidelines.

  • Sustainable tourism - Leave No Trace

    Sustainability is the key to a positive future for tourism

    Read time: 1 min

    Embedding sustainable practices into all aspects of a tourism business has become more common these days.  It is widely understood that sustainability is key to minimise the negative impacts (such as over tourism, exploitation of children and wild animals, inauthentic tourism activities and poorly paid seasonal jobs) and maximise the positive impacts (such as promoting cultural heritage, job creation for economic independence, protection of wildlife species and habitats, job creation, community-led tourism).

  • A digital world

    Digital Transformation in the Tourism Sector

    Read time: 1 min

    Digitalisation has transformed the way companies do business.  In the tourism industry, purchasing flights online and booking hotel rooms on the Internet marked the early days of digital transformation in the sector.  

  • Caribbean island, blue tourism

    Three unique challenges to sustainable tourism in islands

    Read time: 3 mins

    Blue tourism is a term used to describe Coastal and Maritime tourism. The sector has become an increasing source of income for destinations with attractive coastlines thanks to the development of multiple tourism activities such as cruise tourism, boating, watersports, scuba diving, marine life observation, fishing and recreational use of beaches. However, these activities often put a lot of pressure on local ecosystems and tend to damage the destinations’ environmental assets, which, very often are what visitors are attracted to in the destination. Sustainable development of these blue tourism destinations is therefore becoming critical to avoid altering their natural resources to a point of no return. 

  • Resident Visitor Survey for destination sustainable development.

    The one stakeholder NOT to forget…!

    Read time: 3 mins

    Sustainable tourism encompasses much more than solely protecting the environment in the destination, even though that is essential of course. A sustainable destination must be one that cares for its wildlife and landscapes, but also one that cares for its inhabitants! When thinking about tourism, one often thinks about visitors and the private tourism sector within the destination. But sometimes we forget the most important stakeholder: the local community, which is not always directly linked to the tourism sector.

  • Digital Nomad and Bleisure

    Millennials and Gen Z Poised to Spearhead a Rise in Bleisure Travel after COVID-19

    Read time: 1 min

    Before COVID-19, the ‘bleisure’ travel trend, defined as a mix of business and leisure travel, was taking off, driven by the Millennials (or Gen Y), a large, important travelling group.  Already keen travellers, Millennials are well known to be keen on experiential travel that offers an authentic insight into a destination, immersing themselves into new cultures and local lives. 

  • Street food cart

    How Food Tourism is a Driver for Authentic Tourism Experiences

    Read time: 1 min

    As food plays a central part in the lives of all people on the planet and local specialities are widely appreciated as an intrinsic feature of many cultures, it is now well understood that local cuisines play an important role in offering the visitor an authentic insight into the culture of a place.

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