Meaningful Tourism Gains Momentum at GITF 2025 as PATA Underscores the Need for Purpose-Driven Travel
Picture: L/R: Catherine Germier-Hamel, CEO, Millennium Destinations; Prof. Dr Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director, Meaningful Tourism Centre; Peter Semone, Chair, PATA; and Anita Chan, CEO, Compass Edge, and Chief Executive Officer Asia Pacific, Elegant Hotel Collection, during the Meaningful Tourism Forum.
BANGKOK, May 29, 2025 –The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) reinforced its commitment to advancing Meaningful Tourism during its active participation at the Guangzhou International Travel Fair (GITF) 2025, where the concept featured prominently in multiple discussions and forums.
With tourism recovery in full swing, destinations across the Asia Pacific region are being urged to go beyond traditional metrics and embrace a more balanced approach to development - one that centres on community wellbeing, cultural preservation, visitor enrichment, and environmental stewardship. Meaningful Tourism provides a strategic framework for this shift, aligning long-term industry resilience with the needs and values of all stakeholders.
PATA Chair Peter Semone, delivering a keynote at the China Outbound Tourism Forum and speaking during the Meaningful Tourism Forum on May 17, stressed the urgency of rethinking tourism’s purpose and priorities.
“Tourism must evolve from a numbers game to a values-driven endeavour. Meaningful Tourism challenges us to rethink success—not just in terms of arrivals or spending, but in how well we serve communities, protect heritage, and enrich lives,” Mr. Semone stated. “At PATA, we believe the future of tourism lies in creating shared value, and we are proud to work alongside the Meaningful Tourism Centre to help guide that transition across the Asia Pacific region.”
During the Meaningful Tourism Forum, Prof. Dr Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director of the Meaningful Tourism Centre, introduced the foundational principles of Meaningful Tourism, highlighting its relevance in responding to the changing expectations of Chinese outbound travellers. A roundtable dialogue featuring experts from across the sector explored practical strategies for embedding meaningfulness into tourism product design, policy, and destination management.
The sessions reflected growing recognition within the global travel community that sustainable recovery must be paired with deeper cultural relevance, social equity, and ecological responsibility. Meaningful Tourism offers a holistic path forward—reframing tourism as a force that empowers host communities and enriches visitor experiences simultaneously.
PATA and the Meaningful Tourism Centre previously signed a Memorandum of Understanding earlier this year to collaborate on knowledge-sharing, training, and measurement tools that support a more inclusive and sustainable tourism landscape.
GITF 2025 served as a timely platform for advancing these conversations, engaging government officials, private sector leaders, and destination managers in an evolving dialogue about tourism’s role in building more liveable, resilient, and meaningful societies.
About Meaningful Tourism Centre Ltd
Meaningful Tourism Centre is a not-for-profit research organisation based in London and Kathmandu promoting the Meaningful Tourism paradigm as the base for creating a holistic approach which provides and measures objective benefits and subjective satisfaction by the way tourism is organised for all six major stakeholders of tourism and hospitality.
The six major stakeholders identified for tourism and hospitality are Travellers, Host communities, Employees in tourism and hospitality service providing companies,Tourism and hospitality service providing companies, Governments on different levels and the Environment.
The Meaningful Tourism approach includes sustainable practices for all aspects of tourism and hospitality, including also areas like hotel construction and financing, all grounded in principles of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, with an emphasis on activities that benefit individuals, others, and future generations.
Adopting Meaningful Tourism as a strategy is not a “nice-to-have” issue, but necessary for most destinations and service providers to proactively react in a Schumpeter sense of Creative Destruction to the effects of climate change to survive.
Meaningful Tourism provides a practical tool to identify and implement measurable benefits and satisfaction of all stakeholders, measuring them with SMART Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for continuous improvement.
The Meaningful Tourism paradigm has been developed by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGS FRAS, the founder and director of the Meaningful Tourism Centre Ltd.
