Twenty years ago, we founded mascontour with a clear conviction: sustainability only matters when it is implemented – in destinations, businesses, policies, and daily decisions. Since then, we’ve had the privilege to work with partners across the world on strategies, standards, capacities, and concrete measures that make tourism more resilient and more sustainable.
First and foremost: thank you to all clients, partners, peers, and friends for your trust, your openness, and your commitment. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved together and even more excited about what’s ahead.
20 years – what we’ve learned (and how mascontour evolved because of it)
- From “best practice” to “what works here”: We learned early that copying solutions doesn’t create change. Our work shifted towards context-specific implementation – built around local governance realities, market dynamics, culture, and capacity, so partners can actually deliver.
- From strategy documents to delivery systems: Sustainability matured and expectations rose. We therefore specialised in turning ambition into delivery-ready roadmaps: practical measures, clear responsibilities, timelines, and the routines that keep implementation moving long after a project ends.
- From sustainability to resilience as a development capability: Resilience is bigger than risk and bigger than sustainability. It’s about the ability to act, adapt, and improve under pressure. That’s why we developed our expanded resilience model: a practical lens and structure that helps destinations and businesses build capabilities (not just plans) across the areas that decide whether tourism can perform and recover in a changing world.
- People move systems (internally and externally): We learned that the best concept fails without the right people around the table – and the right team behind it. We invest heavily in trusted relationships, facilitation, and long-term cooperation, and we bring a strong internal culture of collaboration and ownership because change needs commitment, not just expertise.
- From one-off training to continuous capacity development: We learned that capacity isn’t built in a workshop, it’s built through practice, repetition, reflection, and support in real work situations. That’s why we created confetti, mascontour’s own online upskilling platform: to meet people where they are, turn complexity into practical bite-sized actions, and provide learning formats that fit limited time, high workload, and diverse roles. Instead of “training events”, we focus on continuous enablement, helping teams internalise new habits, make better day-to-day decisions, and keep implementation moving between milestones.
- Enablement beats compliance: We’ve seen that progress comes when organisations feel capable, not when they feel controlled. Our focus is therefore on building implementation competence – helping partners convert complexity into clear, actionable next steps, strengthen leadership and internal coordination, and create the confidence to act.
What need to happen now to future-proof tourism
- A hopeful, widely shared vision that people can feel: We need to move from “sustainability as a technical agenda” to a positive future story that resonates beyond our bubble. Tourism that strengthens places to live, creates pride and opportunity, protects what people value, and offers experiences rooted in quality and respect. If people can picture the benefit, they will defend the direction – especially in headwind times.
- Meet people where they are and prove value in everyday life: With growing scepticism toward sustainability and democracy, the sector must speak to real concerns and real gains – jobs, affordability, safety, local identity, public services, cleaner environments, and better visitor management. That requires different language, better listening, and coalition-building with the people who shape opinion locally, not just those already convinced.
- Make before measure (and don’t reduce sustainability to checklists): Standards, criteria, indicators and reporting are useful but only after action has started. The priority is implementation competence: turning complexity into doable steps, practical routines, and visible improvements. If nothing is done, there is nothing meaningful to measure and “technical perfection” can become an excuse for inaction.
- Protect what has been achieved while continuing to move forward: In a period of political polarisation and funding pressure, progress is not guaranteed. We need to actively safeguard existing capacities, partnerships, institutions, and on-the-ground improvements because they can be dismantled faster than they were built. Resilience includes the ability to hold the line: keeping cooperation alive, maintaining trust, and defending what works.
- Reframe tourism development cooperation and the unique value of tourism as an action field: Tourism cooperation should focus on shared stability and human development outcomes: decent livelihoods, local value creation, better governance, skills and entrepreneurship, social cohesion, and the capacity of communities and institutions to manage change and shocks.
- Tourism is a powerful action field for this because it is local by nature, SME-driven, employment-intensive (including for women and youth), and it creates incentives to safeguard places, culture, and public spaces while connecting people across borders through exchange and understanding. That is also in donors’ interest: strengthening resilience reduces fragility and crisis costs, supports reliable economic prospects, builds trusted partnerships, and creates safer environments for long-term cooperation and investment. It’s not primarily about export promotion or securing resources; it’s about enabling countries and people to build resilient, well-managed visitor economies that work for residents and visitors alike and that hold up under pressure.
The next years will test the sector but they also offer a chance to define what tourism can truly contribute: stronger places, better livelihoods, and more resilient visitor economies. We’re grateful for the trust so far and we’re looking forward to working with partners who want to move from ideas to implementation. Let’s keep what works, improve what doesn’t, and build what’s needed next. Hope to see many of you at ITB Berlin 2026 – we’ve got some things in motion!
