Local Value Creation in Tourism

Initial situation

Tourism is one of the most economically significant sectors worldwide and, thanks to its employment intensity and close interlinkage with other sectors such as agriculture, crafts or services, offers enormous potential for local value creation. Through the support of local businesses, creation of local employment opportunities or investment in infrastructure, tourism can be a central driver for improving living standards. However, a standardised, recognised methodology for calculating local value creation from travel to the Global South is currently lacking. Existing approaches are neither comparable nor scientifically sound.

At the same time, traveller demand for socially responsible offers is growing. Transparent reporting of the socio-economic impact of tourism products would both raise customer awareness and enable tour operators to further develop their offers in ways that enhance local value creation, thus gaining a competitive edge. On the other hand, destinations could better identify where and how local value creation can be increased.

Project objective

The aim of the project is to develop a sector-wide recognised methodology for calculating local value creation from travel. This will help increase the economic and social impact of tourism in destinations while strengthening the transparency and credibility of socially responsible travel offers. Through Futouris, forum anders reisen and the DRV, industry stakeholders will be actively involved to ensure broad adoption across the sector.

Core Activities

1.     Development of the Calculation Methodology

Existing national and international approaches to measuring the local value creation of travel are being analyzed and further developed into a standardized, practical methodology in collaboration with tour operators and experts. The methodology is intended to be applicable to various forms of travel (e.g., package tours, individual and modular travel, cruises) in order to transparently capture the social impact of their trips in the destinations. Necessary definitions and delimitations will also be established.

The methodology to be developed will build upon existing scientific approaches and refine them while taking into account the requirements of the tourism industry (e.g., working with realistically available company data). To ensure broad applicability of the calculation methodology, the focus is on practicality. Data availability is one of the key challenges. The goal is for tourism companies to be able to use the developed calculation methodology to capture and analyze the economic and social impact of all their trips in order to derive and implement practical measures to improve local value creation.

For use in companies, practical indicators are developed in a co-creation process with the participating pilot companies, according to which local value creation can be determined.

2.     Piloting in destinations

The methodology will be tested in pilot companies and/or in 1-3 selected, relevant partner locations and optimized for application in internal processes (product development) as well as for external communication (raising awareness among sales and customers). The goal is to verify the method's practicality under real-world conditions, identify challenges in its application, and further develop the calculation method based on the insights gained.

Based on the results of the pilot test, the method will be finalized and supplemented with suitable tools (e.g., templates, data collection sheets, or guidelines).

3.     Sector-wide Transfer & Implementation

The developed methodology, including its derivation and experiences from the pilot destinations, will be published. A practice-oriented implementation and dissemination concept will be developed alongside the publication. This concept will include suitable tools, materials, and formats for introducing and applying the method and will support companies in its implementation. Selected measures will be implemented jointly with the participating associations within the project.

Claims for benefit and a business case will sustainably support the acceptance and application of the developed calculation method.

Furthermore, proposals for transparent and EU-EmpCo-compliant communication of the results to customers will be developed.

All materials will be made available to the industry through industry events, webinars, and social media by Futouris and the project partners DRV and forum anders reisen, both during the project and continuously after its completion.