Meaningful Tourism Award 2025 winners to be announced during conference in Kathmandu
Dear reader,
the preparations for the Meaningful Tourism Award 2025 are in full swing. Your humble editor is happy to share with you that the announcement of the 18 winners will happen as part of a prestigious conference in Kathmandu/Nepal on December 4, 2025. Winners who happen to be in Kathmandu will receive the Award Certificate in person.
The Global College International, one of the major Higher Education institutions in Nepal, is organising on December 4 and 5, 2025, the 7th Global International Conference under the title “Integrating Management with AI and Machine Learning for Innovation and Sustainability in the Digital Era”.
Your humble editor will be providing one of the keynote speeches of the conference talking about AI and Meaningful Tourism as one of several international speakers and panellists. About 500 participants are expected and about 100 papers will be presented in seven parallel tracks.
As announced before, the Meaningful Tourism Centre (MTC) is organising for the fourth time the Meaningful Tourism Award. Projects, programs, destinations, companies, and organisations that are working in a framework that aligns the benefits and satisfaction of all tourism and hospitality stakeholders will be able to enter the group of potential winners of the Meaningful Tourism Award 2025 by nomination from one of their friends, partners, and supporters before November 22, 2025.
There are six categories, for each of the six main stakeholders, awarding those which are themselves or which are providing especially beneficial and satisfying services for travellers, host communities, employees of service providers, service providing companies, governments at different levels, or the environment. For each stakeholder category, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards will be selected. Award winners will be featured on the MTC website and in an eBook publication, as well as on social media and the Meaningful Tourism Weekly newsletter. The winners will also receive a certificate and an exclusive Meaningful Tourism Award 2025 Winner logo for use in their own marketing and communications.
Some examples of previous winners of the Meaningful Tourism Award include:
• for the Travellers category: Museo del Baile Flamenco in Sevilla for connecting visitors and local communities
• for the Host Communities category: Sustainable Travel and Tourism Africa (STTA) in Kenya, a consulting company committed to supporting sustainability of tourism destinations and businesses
• for the Employees category: NGO Unseen Tours, which helps formerly homeless people in London to work as a tour guide, showing how life is on the streets
• for the Companies and Organizations category: Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority for Meaningful Tourism approaches in their tourism strategy
• for the Governments category: 4VI group, which transformed from the DMO Tourism Vancouver Island to a Social Enterprise based on four key pillars: communities, business, cultures, and the environment
• and for the Environment category: Aleenta Resort and Spa Phuket - Phang Nga, which showed that a resort can also connect to nature and local culture.
Hopefully, these examples are inspiring our readers to nominate for the 2025 edition of the Meaningful Tourism Award!
As always, all best wishes from Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, a.k.a. “Prof M”, and the whole team in Kathmandu and Manila.
Meet the Meaningful Tourism community in Dubai
The Sustainable Destinations Forum (SDF) 2025, organised by our friends from Green Destinations and the Dubai Tourism Authority on October 28 and 29, 2025, will offer a great opportunity to meet six members of the Meaningful Tourism community.
PROF M, your humble editor, will be, according to the latest updated program on the first day, be part of the panel “Developing Beneficial Travel Experiences”. This panel will discuss how the development of new travel offers enriches tourist experiences, promotes sustainability, and supports local businesses, obviously with a focus on Meaningful Tourism.
On Day 2, “Adding a Good Travel Experience as a premium value to the Market Place” is the topic of a workshop. Dr. Ali Akaak, Certified Trainer for Oman, and Prof M will be the two participants, talking with the moderators Jana Apih, Executive Director of Green Destinations Foundation, and Iyad Kayali, Regional Director of Green Destinations.
During the conference, Meaningful Tourism readers will also be able to meet the Certified Trainers for South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkiye, UAE, and Zanzibar.
More details can be found in the Events section below.
By using the code GD2025PARTNERS when booking your ticket, the Meaningful Tourism Centre can provide a 25% discount for the participation fee, saving 40 USD, for all readers of the Meaningful Tourism Weekly!
More university cooperations for Meaningful Tourism
Last week, we reported the progress in the cooperation between MTC and the Daffodil International University (DIU) in Bangladesh. MTC is now also about to start university-level cooperations for training and academic courses with universities in India and Nepal.
Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
Locals against tourists – Protests continuing in 2025
The summer season in Europe has come to an end; however, the protests in many popular destinations continue. Tourist numbers are back to pre-pandemic levels or even higher than ever before. Accordingly, the “Overtourism” debate is continuing. In fact, it is a problem of maybe 1% of all destinations and is concentrated in Europe. Still, it is a clear sign of the consequences of a non-holistic management approach.
Protests have generally remained peaceful, with demonstrations and graffiti, with occasional attacks involving water pistols or horse droppings.
An Italian artist found a creative way to highlight his situation. As one of the last 50,000 inhabitants of Venice, local musician Alessio Centenaro posted a video showing him dressed as an astronaut, wading through the summer crowds of visitors to Venice, signaling that he feels equally out of place in his hometown as an astronaut on another planet.
MTC Certified Trainers
Please find below the updated overview of all our Certified Trainers for the Meaningful Tourism Transformational Game Workshop, along with the updated World Map showing the countries directly and indirectly covered at present.
With almost 50 Certified Trainers, many countries and regions of the world are already covered. However, MTC continues to look for professionals with experience in training or lecturing and a passion for sustainable tourism.
If you are interested in becoming a Certified Trainer for the Meaningful Tourism Transformational Game Workshop for a country not marked in dark green on the map above, please contact us at office@meaningfultourismcentre.org.
Sustainable Destinations Forum 2025 in Expo City Dubai
SDF2025 DAY 1
Day One will feature the main SDF2025 Forum, a full-day conference with high-level panels covering key themes such as empowering local leadership, implementing sustainable business practices, leveraging data for impact and designing beneficial travel experiences. The day will conclude with the SDF Award Ceremony and an evening Heritage Desert Dinner.
15:30 – 16:30 – Afternoon Panel
Panel: Developing Beneficial Travel Experiences
Developing new travel offers enriches tourist experiences, promotes sustainability, and supports local businesses. Community-driven initiatives enhance cultural, environmental, and economic outcomes, fostering responsible travel while contributing to long-term destination well-being and preserving cultural heritage.
SDF2025 DAY 1
Day Two will host SDF2025 Working Sessions, a series of closed-door discussions and strategic roundtables reserved for Green Destinations partners, members, and invited collaborators. These sessions will focus on deep dives into key sustainability tools, frameworks, and shared challenges.
Workshop session 5
Adding a Good Travel Experience as a premium value to the Market Place
Background & Rationale
According to surveys, 96% of travelers want their travel spending to make a positive impact in the places they visit, and 71% want to leave the destination better after their visit. In this context, creating experiences for travelers is very important, since 58% of Gen-Z and millennial travelers say they are prioritizing experiences over things. Green Destinations has initiated the Good Travel Alliance to work together with destinations, tour operators, and activity providers in helping them to recognise and promote Good Travel Experiences.
The Green Destinations Solutions Team developed the methodology to identify, evaluate, and improve:
- the quality of the experience destinations and activity providers offer to their visitors and clients, usually through attractions, events, activities, tours, trails, and other travel products
- the positive socio-economic impact on local communities: generating income, creating jobs, and empowering local people
- the impact on the environment, with attention to climate, water, waste and pollution.
With this methodology, it has become easy and very affordable to have providers of Good Travel Experiences recognised, for which great interest is expected in the market as a premium product.
Objectives
- To help tourism boards, destinations and tour operators understand the concept.
- To engage these professionals in the practical steps of having their travel offers recognised as Good Travel Experiences.
- To add Good Travel Experience as a premium value to the Market Place.
Content
- Understanding the concept of Good Travel Experience, with examples
- Before the workshop, each participant will be invited to make a self-assessment of a product, activity or trail with one of the scans (Product & Activity Scan, Trail Scan or Event Scan)
- The moderators will provide feedback to the self-assessments and engage the participants in discussions on how to provide additional evidence to have their offer recognised as a Good Travel Experience.
- Best workshop to select after this GTE workshop is the Hero experience workshop (#6) or workshop #3 on indicators and KPIs.
The full SDF2025 agenda is available here.
About Meaningful Tourism Weekly
Meaningful Tourism Weekly is published every Thursday by Meaningful Tourism Centre (MTC) - London and Kathmandu in collaboration with Travel Asia Now, led by Rhea Vitto Tabora. This partnership enhances the newsletter’s professional production and distribution, bringing added value to our readers.
Each issue features Editorial, updates on MTC activities, a Best Practice Example, a profile of an MTC-certified trainer, news about upcoming events, and occasionally additional op-ed pieces from guest authors. Carefully selected news items, including videos and podcasts, are also included, with links to their original sources in the Meaningful Tourism News section.
Subscription to Meaningful Tourism Weekly is free, with the addition of a paid content section that includes a library of surveys, exclusive articles, conference presentations, and statistical data, offering subscribers invaluable resources.
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For more information about MTC's training programs, market research, product adaptation, consulting services, conferences, strategy development, and marketing, visit our website or email us at info@meaningfultourismcentre.org.
