Six Priorities Shaping the Sector’s Transition

Tourism and hospitality are entering a period defined by rapid change. Climate volatility, evolving traveler expectations, workforce transitions and accelerating digitalization are challenging long-established models.

In November 2025, EHL Hospitality Business School convened international researchers and industry leaders for a two-day workshop — Imagining the Future in Dark Times — to reflect on how the tourism and hospitality sector can adapt and prepare for the decade ahead.

Across discussions, a shared insight emerged: the future of tourism will depend less on isolated solutions and more on the sector’s ability to navigate complexity, manage systemic risks while building resilient, equitable and low-impact systems.  

To support this effort, participants collectively articulated six priority areas that will anchor future research and collaboration.

Six Priorities for the Future of Tourism

The white paper Reimagining Tourism Futures: Pathways for Transition in Turbulent Times consolidates the insights from the workshop into six interconnected domains:

1. Climate & Mobility

How travel patterns, aviation dependence and climate risk will reshape destination viability, tourism geographies, guest behavior and long-term planning.  

This theme foregrounds the role of mobility systems as structural drivers of emissions and risk, emphasizing the need for reduced-distance travel, low-energy modes and climate-realistic transition pathways.  

2. Food & Circularity

How food systems, procurement practices, value-chain redesign and circular practices can reduce environmental pressures while strengthening local resilience.

The focus lies on upstream prevention, plant-forward transitions, true-cost accounting, and regenerative sourcing, including moving beyond downstream waste management toward systemic change.   

3. Social & Work

The future of work in tourism and hospitality, including skills, inclusion, well-being, and the human foundations of service in a digitally evolving sector.

This theme highlights labor as the enabling infrastructure of sustainability transitions. It examines how digitalization, AI and new work arrangements intersect with equity, dignity and organizational resilience.  

4. Governance & Policy

The regulatory frameworks, institutional arrangements and cross-sector coordination required to enable a credible transition.  

Without coherent governance (spanning mobility, food, energy, labor and land use) systemic change remains unattainable.

5. Measurement & Assessment

How tourism measures impact and tracks progress while ensuring accountability.  

This theme outlines the limits of fragmented metrics, certification schemes and reporting systems. Indeed, assessment frameworks aligned with absolute sustainability thresholds and zero-emissions pathways are urgently needed.   

6. Business Models & Management

How firms and destinations can reimagine value creation, business models, long-term strategies and purpose under ecological and social constraints.  

This priority binds the others together, examining regenerative, community-centered, strategic identity and differentiated growth models that align long-term viability with societal well-being.

Each theme reflects both immediate pressures and emerging opportunities. Importantly, they do not stand alone: their intersections reveal the complex systems within which tourism operates. A visual overview of the six priorities is available in the accompanying video. 

Practical Industry Insights

The second day of the workshop centered on industry perspectives from hospitality, construction and real estate, food & beverage and travel. Leaders from Nespresso, Six Senses, MSC Cruises, Losinger Marazzi, Sandoz Hotels and B Lab Switzerland shared how their organizations are responding to mounting sustainability, regulatory and market pressures.

Speakers emphasized a clear shift: sustainability is moving beyond isolated operational adjustments toward strategic decisions affecting business models, investment horizons, partnerships and asset planning. Transparency, data quality and cross-sector collaboration were repeatedly cited as prerequisites for meaningful progress.

As one participant summarized:

“We are moving into a landscape where resilience and adaptability matter as much as profitability. The business that prepares now will be the one shaping the next decade.”

A Collaborative White Paper  

The white paper is the result of close collaboration among academic and industry participants and reflects a wide diversity of disciplinary perspectives. It offers:

• a structured overview of six priority research areas

• reflections from academic and industry experts

• a system-level framing of tourism’s transition challenges 

• pathways for future research, innovation and policy engagement

Rather than documenting best practices, the paper functions as a research agenda and strategic scorecard. It identifies where collective understanding must deepen before large-scale solutions can emerge.

Download the White Paper. 

Looking Ahead

As tourism faces an increasingly uncertain global context, forums that connect academic insights with industry experience are essential. This white paper provides a shared framework for future research and collaboration in its support of more informed decision-making across the sector. 

Dr Carlos Martin-Rios – Associate Professor at EHL. Connect with Carlos on LinkedIn.

This article originally appeared on EHL Insights.