World Tourism Day 2022: Take a break, take a slowliday

Hi everyone,

I’m back from my annual summer digital detox, a real slowliday. It was a great time for self-care and reconnecting to nature like I usually do each summer.

I spent a week with my grandfather who told me about his summer 2022 with grandma. They used to live in Brittany, France and they wanted to spend their holidays not far away from their hometown and enjoy the beauty of their region. They went to Douarnenez, and to be honest, the city was pretty ahead of its time when it came to slow tourism.

I was really impressed by Douarnenez: with Circulab's help, they built a tailor-made offer to welcome seniors and families in their town by working closely with local businesses and leaning on the strengths of the area. What a brilliant idea!

They realized that working all together was a powerful move for the local travel & tourism industry. It was a win-win situation for everyone: tourists, tourism operators, and nature.

Today is the World Tourism Day 2032, the right day to embrace slow tourism, whether you are a tourist or a travel destination looking to transform your offer! To help you on this journey, I'm sharing some ideas and opportunities to take action and turn slow tourism into the default setting for travel.

Enjoy your reading,
Josephine

Transforming vision into action

The COVID-19 pandemic offered a rare opportunity for tourism actors to pause, think and consider the opportunities presented by shifting their activities towards a Circular Economy.

Today they can act as powerful enablers of circularity and benefit from shared circular value creation whilst deploying a new framing and new thinking for the tourism industry.

In line with the UNWTO One Planet Vision, Fabrice Sorin, Travel Industry & Circular Economy specialist, shared on our blog some of the opportunities tourism actors can implement to benefit from a Circular Economy.

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What are the community members up to?

👋 New Circulab community members in Belgium and across France!
This month we welcomed in the community:

Anne Goujon in Nantes, France, helping innovative projects with lean startup, design thinking, collective intelligence, and now circular design methodologies.
Audrey Moriaud, based near Annecy and the Swiss border, a B Leader accompanying organizations on the road to the B Corp Certification and using collective intelligence methods to build awareness of the climate and circular economy stakes
Hugues Dethienne, based near Brussels, entrepreneur and executive management advisor, focused on alignment between strategy, organization, finance, and regenerative & circular economy.

🔄 Helping a chemical products business towards more circularity, by Eric Perrot and Anne-Laure Bulliffon. MAPEI France Executive Committee participated in a Circular Canvas workshop looking to develop solutions for two of the company's major challenges: reducing single-used packaging and helping the decarbonization of the industrial and marketing processes.

🏡 A new third place in Toulouse opening in October, by Chloé Cohen. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the third place Les Halles de la Transition will open its doors in Toulouse on October 1st. Les Halles de la Transition is not only a physical space but also a new agency offering awareness-building workshops, training, and counsel around environmental transition, as well as communications, design, and event services for impact-driven organizations in the area. Follow their news on LinkedIn.

💡 Transforming the agrifood sector thanks to a circular economy, by Andreas Ellenberger. Andreas organized a workshop with the students of the Interreg MED Green Growth Community. The goal was to think of more regenerative territories within the agrifood sector using the Value Chain Canvas from Circulab toolbox. Some ideas that came up include developing more plant-based food, finding local farmers and suppliers, switching to reusable and returnable packaging.