The Business of Becoming

Five powerful ways a transformative experience strategy elevates tourism businesses, deepens impact, drives positive change and long-term value.

First day back at the desk, still flowing and glowing following a scouting trip of the Kumano Kodo in Japan, one of two pilgrimage routes recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Before I get too far away from this ‘feeling,’ I am inspired to share the business benefits of transformative tourism. Why? Travel and tourism have so much potential for more meaning, aliveness, and expansion. More on this walk and becoming a “Dual Pilgrim” coming soon!

Transformative tour experiences, attractions, hotels, and destinations hold the potential to go beyond entertainment and escape. With a bit more guidance, intention, awareness, and a growth mindset, deep and enduring personal impact is possible, often fostering more meaningful emotional connections, powerful learning, bridge-building, and even behavior changes that can enhance and enrich the lives of travelers, hosts, places, and planet.

This all sounds and feels good, right? But for businesses that embrace the emerging transformation economy, it can translate into significant opportunities for value-creation, conscious growth, and positive impact. All powered by a company’s renewed sense of purpose, community, and culture. How sweet it is!

Here are five powerful business benefits of a transformative experience strategy:

1. Inspires deep loyalty: Drives repeat visits and powerful word-of-mouth, reduces the cost of participant acquisition

2. Enables premium pricing: Participants pay more for meaningful, life-changing experiences that leave a positive impact on people and places.

3. Differentiates your brand: Shine like a bright light in a crowded market with purpose-driven, soulful offerings and opportunities that meet rising demand for meaning, connection, and reciprocity.

4. Generates organic exposure: Transformative stories resonate deeply, are soul-stirring, and are more likely to be shared, celebrated, and go viral.

5. Attracts partners and investors: A transformative experience strategy catalyzes purposeful, ethical, impactful experiences and outcomes that align with value-driven stakeholders, including grants and social impact programs.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? Especially when acknowledging the trends emerging across the market to ditch the superficial and artificial and seek out more meaning, purpose, authentic connections, and a desire to travel more consciously.

It’s just that the current way of doing things just isn’t cutting it anymore, so let’s recalibrate and reinvent, shall we? Unfortunately, most travel and hospitality businesses and destinations have remained stuck in the past, unaware or unwilling to reimagine what is possible in their work and in our industry.

Yes, transformations have always been a potential outcome of travel, no duh. But The Transformational Travel Council envisions a new tourism and is committed to challenging the status quo, researching and unlocking how all travel companies and destinations can adopt new purpose, principles, and practices that turn chances into changes that help travelers, hosts, places, and, businesses thrive.

With new inventions and innovations, there are always the first movers and early adopters, as seen in the Innovation Adoption Lifecycle above. But for most, including the early majority and late majority, the ‘proof is in the pudding,’ meaning they need traditional quantitative metrics to know what many of us already know and sense, that transformative tourism is inherently good for everyone, including the profit and loss statement.

I am proud to say that after 9 years and hundreds of TTC Accredited Designers out there improving lives, there are more and more success stories and case studies emerging every day. That being said, we’re still very much in the early adopter phase, offering an extraordinary opportunity for those ready to bravely step into this next generation of travel and not become ‘a laggard.’

Craving more insight, download the Transformative Tourism State of the Industry Report we co-created at our Wisdom Retreat for Better Tourism last year.

Jillian Dickens and I kick off our next 6-week program on the 7th of October. We hope to see some innovators and early adopters there with us! Equitable Pricing is also available.

Journey on, dear hearts,

Jake and the TTC Team and Global Communitas