Tourism operates at the intersections of different social domains and connects a variety of industry sectors and verticals. It is thus a key-industry that can pioneer change, sending ripples across entire value chains and different verticals. Unfortunately, tourism has been operating for too long with an attitude of extracting value and externalising the costs of the impact on the global ecosystem. If we see Covid as an opportunity for innovation, or even as a catalyst for change, the industry could come out of this pandemic more resilient and can maybe even reinvent itself. The opportunity to create new approaches and a new understanding of what tourism could be, should not be wasted.
Sustainability vs. Regeneration
By now it has become clear that the current sustainability concepts alone will not solve the looming climate crisis. Sustainability seems only to slow down the damages by trying to sustain the status quo and doing less harm. However most of the current sustainability measures don’t question the modus operandi, its worldview, or the underlying structural issues. I am not suggesting that current sustainability measures should be dropped; they just need to be complemented by more regenerative practices. With regeneration, we look at our relationship with life and become stewards of the future, thus transcending the goals of sustainability. Only when we manage to build more resilience in our society, will we be able to cope with future disruption and crisis.
A key difference in regeneration is the underlying thinking, which is based on a holistic worldview. The regenerative perspective embraces a ‘whole systems’ thinking approach, focusing on healthy ecosystems and their interconnectedness. Regeneration is a paradigm shift in thinking, as it addresses values, beliefs and assumptions on how our world functions, and thus shapes the perspectives we have on life. It views growth, not as expansion in size, but as the development of increasing complexity, productivity and balance.
Regeneration in Tourism
As travelers seem to be increasingly seeking more profound experiences, the importance of meaningful connections between people and places becomes essential. Creating a sense of place and actually honouring it is an integral part of the regenerative approach, as it fully immerses the traveller in the local history and culture. To integrate regenerative principles for example in a hotel, one has to create the circumstances for regeneration to be experienced by the visitors.
By crafting spaces for engagement, interaction and insight, the guests are invited to learn and be inspired. We could say that we engage travelers in a collaborative discovery of life, which might be the first step to trigger a transformative, or memorable experience.
If we see hospitality as offering quality of life with inspiring human encounters, it is all about how the guest experiences are designed. With a growing individualisation, it’s hard to design offerings that appeal to everybody. Therefore, the participation of the visitor and the act of co-creation of their experience gains importance.
Hence successful providers will try to embrace this evolution and start to engage in new and lateral cooperation, creating spaces of resonance that allow the unfolding of experiences that were not possible before. Creative and emotional storytelling will support the emergence of ‘regeneration-smart’ destinations. Lets now look at how Seeds could play a role in this touristic ecosystem regeneration.
Igniting a Virtuous Cycle With Seeds
As regeneration is at the heart of the SEEDS initiative, it only makes sense to introduce Seeds into any tourism economy. With its focus on creating more resilience and strengthening the primary sector, especially the food production, this new global, blockchain-based payment platform and currency is poised to play a role in the process of creating more regenerative tourism ecosystems. As SEEDS rewards ecological behaviours by individuals, companies and communities, it directly supports a more equitable and regenerative society. The potential is limitless, as it can support the creation of entire geographical bioregions to thrive by using Seeds.
But for now let’s focus on the simple first steps on how to get Seeds in a local ecosystem. At the beginning, there are two key factors: one is how do we bring the Seeds in circulation and the other one is, how do we keep them circulating, meaning how can they be used as means of transaction.
Bringing the Seeds into circulation, has obviously to go hand in hand with the creation of transaction points. If there are no businesses that allow you to purchase goods or services with your Seeds, they will be pretty worthless and the currency won’t be considered an alternative to any traditional currency.
So why would a business want to start accepting Seeds?
The motivation for the early adoptors is clear; they believe in the vision and they want to support the global regenerative movement. Apart from that there is also an aspect of unique positioning as a business that is ahead of digitalisation by offering crypto payment. On top of this, there is actually no, or very little risk and additional work involved. SEEDS provides all the tools and support to implement Seeds as an additional payment solution (you can find them on the website under ´tools for partners and collaborators´). More reasons on why to accept Seeds can be found here.
The Use of Seeds as Currency
Once a hotel, tour operator or restaurant starts to accept Seeds, this triggers a chain reaction, as the business then wants to use these Seeds for example to buy fresh veggies or pay some other supplier. A farm or co-op who receives the Seeds as payment can then either use them to pay their staff or exchange them with any other organisation that they are exchanging goods or services with. Of course in the beginning these will often be combined transactions that still involve traditional currency but this will reduce once the acceptance of Seeds grows. If they use the Seeds to pay, for example fringe benefit, or bonuses to their staff; they can then go and spend them again at a restaurant, or maybe with a local therapist or craftsman. The easiest way for hospitality establishments to accept Seeds in the beginning will be via online transactions, as this allows efficiency handling, easy accounting and to control the share of incoming Seeds in relation to other currencies and payment methods.
At the same time there needs to be an initial supply of Seeds within the local community. This can happen via a variety of instruments that are provided to local organisations or individuals by SEEDS. For example by launching a campaign, one can reward any regenerative behaviour of the local population by giving them Seeds for free (more info on funding here). Like that, there is a basic float of Seeds in the system that creates initial awareness. But to get fresh Seeds into the local Seeds economy and to start a real money-flow cycle, we need the spending of the visiting tourists. As SEEDS provides exposure for the businesses via its platform, app and other channels, there is also an added benefit in terms of marketing. (More information on regenerative economics in this article. Of course there are many other ways to explore, like involving the tourism authorities, or environmental NGO’s that are already active in the tourism ecosystem. They could use Seeds as an incentive for regenerative behaviour of locals and tourists alike. Hotel chains and affiliations could also use Seeds for their internal loyalty reward programs.
Regeneration begins with the way we engage, interact, relate and do transactions with each other. SEEDS offers a playful way of doing this that can be easily implemented in a touristic setting. Currently there are many local pilot projects starting all over the world who are prototyping the Seeds implementation in a variety of different cultures and settings. To find out more, reach out to the SEEDS community via your passport, making a post in the forum, or joining a topic related channel on Discord.
For more information you can also contact the author via Discord (SanMartin), or via his website: www.atma.life. There is also a regenerative tourism channel on Discord.
