For years, destination organizations have been asked to prove their value.

How many visitors did we attract? How much did they spend? How many hotel rooms did they fill? How much tax revenue did tourism generate?

Those questions still matter. But they are no longer enough.

Increasingly, destination organizations are being asked a bigger question:

How does tourism make this a better place to live, work, visit, invest, learn, and belong?

Destinations International's Advocacy & Action Strategic Roadmap recognizes this shift. It defines advocacy as "the intentional practice of positioning destination organizations as essential leaders in advancing community vitality and growth."

That's a meaningful evolution.

Advocacy isn't simply something a destination organization's CEO does at city hall. It isn't a legislative agenda, an annual report, or a collection of economic-impact statistics.

It's something an entire community can participate in.

And that's where education becomes powerful.

At Learn Tourism, we believe destinations don't simply need better messages about tourism. They need more people who understand tourism, see their role within it, and know how to turn that understanding into action.

That's how we build destination advocates.

And it closely mirrors the progression Destinations International lays out in its roadmap:

Awareness → Influence → Impact.

Destination Advocacy Begins With Understanding

The first layer of Destinations International's framework is Foundations of Advocacy — Awareness.

The roadmap describes this foundation as grounding advocacy in credible data, research, storytelling, and consistent communication so that stakeholders, policymakers, and residents develop a shared understanding of tourism's impact.

This is exactly why education matters.

You cannot reasonably expect someone to advocate for a destination organization if they don't understand what it does.

You cannot ask residents to support tourism development if they only encounter tourism when traffic increases.

You cannot expect a frontline employee to reinforce a destination's brand promise if nobody has helped them understand that promise.

And you cannot expect community leaders to connect tourism with workforce development, infrastructure, small businesses, cultural assets, or quality of life if the industry's story begins and ends with visitor spending.

Awareness has to come before advocacy.

Destination education creates that foundation.

A well-designed destination learning program can help residents, hospitality employees, volunteers, business owners, community leaders, elected officials, and other stakeholders understand questions such as:

• Why does tourism matter here?
• Who benefits from the visitor economy?
• What does the destination organization actually do?
• How does tourism support community priorities?
• What challenges does tourism create, and how are they being addressed?
• What makes our community distinctive?
• What role can I play?

When people understand the why, the conversation changes.

Tourism stops being something happening to the community and becomes something the community can help shape.

Awareness Is Only the Beginning

The second layer of DI's framework is Strategic Engagement — Influence.

Here, the destination organization's role evolves from communicating information to building relationships, convening stakeholders, and aligning tourism with broader community priorities such as jobs, infrastructure, inclusion, and quality of life.

This distinction is critical.

Education shouldn't simply transfer information.

It should create agency.

That's one of the most important differences between a traditional destination orientation program and the kinds of learning experiences we build with destinations at Learn Tourism.

Completion isn't the ultimate objective.

Action is.

We want learners asking:

What can I do with what I've learned?

That might mean recommending a locally owned business to a visitor.

It could mean telling a neighbor how visitor-generated revenue supports something residents value.

It might mean helping make an attraction more accessible.

It could mean volunteering at a community event, participating in a destination stewardship initiative, welcoming a convention attendee, supporting a local cultural organization, attending a public meeting, sharing an accurate tourism statistic, or simply becoming a more informed voice in a community conversation.

Those may seem like small actions individually.

Collectively, they build a constituency.

And a constituency of informed, engaged people is far more powerful than a communications campaign.

From Tourism Ambassadors to Destination Advocates

This is also why we increasingly think beyond the traditional idea of a tourism ambassador.

Knowing where visitors should eat, what attractions they should see, or how to provide excellent hospitality remains valuable.

But today's destinations need something more.

They need destination advocates.

A destination advocate understands that tourism intersects with economic development, workforce development, placemaking, infrastructure, culture, sustainability, accessibility, community identity, and quality of life.

They don't simply know the destination.

They understand their relationship to its future.

This aligns closely with the four pillars identified in the DI roadmap: Leadership, Engagement, Resilience, and Impact.

Education can activate each of them.

Leadership grows when people understand their ability to influence the visitor experience and community.

Engagement grows when learning creates a common language and shared purpose across government, businesses, residents, and industry.

Resilience grows when stakeholders understand challenges before a crisis occurs and know where to find credible information when circumstances change.

Impact grows when learning moves beyond awareness and asks participants to put knowledge into practice.

That's the difference between teaching people about tourism and preparing people to become advocates for their destination.

Turning Destination Plans Into Community Action

There's another challenge destination organizations frequently encounter.

They have plans.

Strategic plans. Stewardship plans. Destination master plans. Accessibility plans. Sustainability plans. Workforce plans. Community engagement strategies. Brand strategies.

The challenge isn't always creating the plan.

The challenge is activating it.

A strategy sitting on a website doesn't change behavior.

A lengthy destination stewardship plan doesn't automatically change what a hotel employee, attraction manager, resident, volunteer, restaurant owner, or community leader does tomorrow morning.

Someone has to translate strategy into action.

Education can become that bridge.

We can take the priorities already established by a destination and transform them into accessible learning experiences that answer three simple questions:

What does this mean?

Why does it matter to me?

What can I do about it?

Suddenly, a destination plan isn't something owned exclusively by the DMO or a steering committee.

Thousands of people can participate in implementing it.

That is advocacy and action.

Phase One: Build the Foundation

The roadmap's first phase emphasizes awareness, education, collaboration, existing research and tools, case studies, professional development, mentorship, workshops, webinars, and an Advocacy Leadership Learning Series.

Destination education helps operationalize those ideas locally.

And destinations don't have to wait years to begin.

Think of Month 1 as the starting point: identify the destination's priorities, understand the audiences to engage, establish desired behaviors and outcomes, and determine what people need to know to participate.

In Month 2, those priorities can begin taking shape as learning experiences, stakeholder messaging, resources, and opportunities for engagement.

By Month 3 and beyond, destinations can begin to expand participation, measure understanding, identify gaps, and connect education with real opportunities for community action.

The specific timeline will differ from destination to destination. The principle remains the same:

Instead of simply publishing a report, teach it.

Instead of simply announcing a strategy, help people find themselves within it.

Instead of simply giving stakeholders talking points, help them understand why those talking points matter.

That's how awareness becomes a foundation rather than a campaign.

Phase Two: Move From Learning to Application

The roadmap's second phase moves further into individual and organizational action.

Among other priorities, it calls for advocacy toolkits and messaging guides, communication resources for different stakeholder groups, self-paced microlearning, and interactive workshops that help destination organizations adopt outcomes-driven advocacy approaches, incorporate shared language into messaging, and align strategies with community-shared values.

For a destination implementing its own advocacy action plan, this might represent Months 4–8.

This is where the question shifts from:

Do people understand our priorities?

to:

Are people doing something differently because they understand them?

Destination learning ecosystems can become especially powerful here.

Imagine different community members accessing education tailored to their roles.

A hotel employee might learn how tourism connects to local jobs and how to turn a routine guest interaction into a meaningful welcome.

A resident might learn how tourism supports amenities they enjoy.

A board member might learn how to communicate the destination organization's value.

A community leader might explore the relationship between tourism and economic development.

A business owner might learn how to participate in destination stewardship.

A frontline worker might practice inclusive hospitality.

Not everyone needs exactly the same training.

But they do need a shared understanding of where the destination is going and how they can help get it there.

During these middle months, learning can also become more targeted. Microlearning can address emerging needs. Workshops can turn concepts into skills. Continuing education can deepen understanding. Communities of practice can connect graduates. Calls to action can give learners meaningful ways to participate.

That is how an advocacy framework becomes a community movement.

Phase Three: Create a Culture of Advocacy

The roadmap's third phase moves toward long-term resilience and sustainability.

It calls for proactive approaches to emerging issues, response models, stronger partnerships, additional research and, importantly, learning pathways that equip professionals at every level with the foundational knowledge and skills needed to serve as effective community advocates.

For an individual destination, think of this as Month 9 and beyond.

By this point, the goal shouldn't simply be maintaining a course.

The goal is creating an ongoing culture of learning and advocacy.

The words learning pathways matter.

Advocacy isn't a one-time course.

Neither is community engagement.

People join organizations. Employees change jobs. New elected officials take office. Residents move into the community. Tourism challenges evolve. Strategies change.

Education therefore has to become infrastructure.

A destination can create an introductory learning experience for newcomers, deeper learning for industry professionals, continuing education for graduates, specialized pathways for community leaders, and timely microlearning around emerging issues.

At this stage, destinations can also begin asking more sophisticated questions:

Are graduates becoming more engaged?

Are stakeholders more confident explaining tourism's value?

Are more people participating in destination initiatives?

Are community partners adopting shared language?

Are learners taking the actions identified in the destination's strategic plan?

Is trust changing?

Are we seeing measurable behavioral or community outcomes?

The result isn't simply a larger number of certificates.

It's a growing network of people capable of understanding, explaining, supporting, questioning, improving, and advancing tourism's role in their community.

Education With Empathy™

There is another reason we believe education belongs at the center of destination advocacy.

Trust cannot be demanded.

It has to be earned.

Destination advocacy cannot simply tell residents that tourism is good for them. Communities deserve the opportunity to understand the benefits, acknowledge the tradeoffs, ask questions, see evidence, and participate in shaping what tourism becomes.

That's why our approach at Learn Tourism starts with Education With Empathy™.

We listen.

We design learning around the people a destination is trying to reach.

We use adult learning principles, behavioral science, storytelling, accessible technology, and measurable outcomes to help turn complicated strategies into understandable and actionable experiences.

Most importantly, we recognize that learners aren't an audience to be persuaded.

They're participants in the destination.

That distinction changes everything.

The Destination Effect Requires People

At the top of DI's advocacy framework is The Destination Effect — Impact.

This is where advocacy produces visible outcomes: stronger community trust, investment, supportive policies, infrastructure, economic opportunity, and recognition of destination leaders as important voices in shaping their communities' futures.

Those outcomes don't happen because a destination organization found the perfect slogan.

They happen because people understand.

Then people engage.

Then people act.

That's the progression:

Awareness → Influence → Impact.

Or, viewed through the lens of learning:

Understand → Engage → Act.

And viewed as an implementation strategy, it can be remarkably practical:

Month 1: Define priorities, audiences, desired outcomes, and behaviors.

Month 2: Translate the strategy into accessible learning and engagement.

Month 3: Launch, listen, measure, and expand participation.

Months 4–8: Deepen learning, activate advocates, introduce targeted microlearning, workshops, and calls to action.

Month 9 and beyond: Build continuing education, learning pathways, communities of practice, measurement, and sustained advocacy into the destination's infrastructure.

The timeline can flex. The destination's priorities will vary. The audiences will differ.

But the underlying principle remains:

Don't stop at creating the action plan. Build the human capacity required to implement it.

Destinations International has provided an important roadmap for where destination advocacy is headed.

Our role at Learn Tourism is to help destinations bring that roadmap to life—not by replacing the plans, frameworks, research, or community engagement already underway, but by turning them into learning experiences that people can understand, participate in, and act upon.

Because the strongest destination advocate isn't necessarily the person with "tourism" in their job title.

It may be the restaurant server.

The museum volunteer.

The small business owner.

The hotel housekeeper.

The rideshare driver.

The college student.

The retiree.

The elected official.

The resident who finally understands why tourism matters to the place they call home.

Give people the knowledge, tools, confidence, and opportunity to participate, and advocacy stops being something a destination organization does.

It becomes something a destination can do together.

That's how education becomes advocacy.

That's how advocacy becomes action.

And that's how communities begin creating their own Destination Effect.

About the Author and Tourism Speaker: Stephen Ekstrom

Stephen Ekstrom is the embodiment of a passionate lifelong learner and a seasoned professional in the tourism industry, serving as the CEO and founder of Learn Tourism - the nonprofit academy. With over 25 years of experience, he has cultivated a deep understanding of tourism development and education, driven by his commitment to advancing the industry and fostering sustainable economies. Stephen's insatiable curiosity and love of knowledge have made him a proud nerd, constantly seeking to expand his expertise and share his insights with others. Alongside his faithful furry companions, Rudy and Marjorie, he embraces the digital nomad lifestyle, traversing the globe and immersing himself in diverse cultures. A dedicated advocate for continuous improvement, Stephen is a professional member of the Association for Talent Development and a member of Skal International. Stephen holds prestigious certifications in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from USF, AI Governance and Ethics from Brown University, Sustainable Business Strategy and Transforming Customer Experiences from Harvard Business School, and Sustainable Tourism Destination Management from Cornell.