Governance Is Gaining Importance in Tourism: Growth Alone Is No Longer Enough
The success of a destination is increasingly being measured by more than just the number of visitors. The OECD notes a shift in tourism policies toward models that incorporate sustainability, resilience, and impact on communities, while calling for greater coordination among governments, destinations, and businesses. This evolution places governance in an increasingly prominent position within the sector?s ESG agenda.
Tourism remains a strong economic driver, but the way its growth is managed is changing. The latest report OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026 points to a shift from strategies focused primarily on increasing visitor numbers toward models that seek to balance economic, social, and environmental outcomes.
This transformation is driven, among other factors, by the concentration of visitors in certain destinations, pressure on infrastructure and local communities, risks stemming from extreme weather events, and a more uncertain economic and geopolitical context.
The OECD believes that success in tourism is increasingly linked to the ability to generate sustained economic value, strengthen resilience, reduce environmental impacts, and produce positive outcomes for local communities.
Greater coordination in decision-making
This shift assigns a significant role to tourism governance. Destination management affects areas as diverse as mobility, housing, infrastructure, employment, the environment, and economic development, so decisions can hardly be addressed by a single administration or actor.
The OECD notes that regional and local actors are playing an increasingly prominent role and calls for models capable of improving coordination among the different levels of government, as well as greater participation by communities and the private sector.
The goal is for national policies to establish a common framework, while also allowing destinations the capacity to adapt decisions to their specific circumstances, needs, and constraints.
This trend aligns with the priorities set by the European Union. The Council of the EU has highlighted this year the need to address existing shortcomings in multi-level governance of tourism, strengthen community participation, and address in a more balanced manner both the concentration of tourism in certain locations and the development opportunities of less-visited destinations.
From Volume to Value
One of the most significant changes lies in the very definition of success. Traditional indicators such as arrivals, overnight stays, and tourist spending remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient to explain a destination?s performance.
The new approach incorporates factors such as the distribution of benefits, pressure on infrastructure, coexistence with residents, crisis response capacity, and the distribution of tourist flows across regions and seasons.
The data thus take on a central role in governance. The OECD notes that countries are strengthening their information systems to obtain more detailed indicators that enable decision-making and the evaluation of results.
This trend also has implications for convention and event tourism. The attraction of conferences and large gatherings can be analyzed not only in terms of the number of attendees or their immediate economic impact, but also in terms of their contribution to the destination, the geographical and temporal distribution of the activity, the mobility they generate, and their relationship with the local community.
Spain is strengthening its monitoring mechanisms
Spain is among the countries that are incorporating this vision into their tourism planning. The OECD highlights that the Spanish strategy includes specific mechanisms for governance, monitoring, and evaluation, as well as issues related to residents? perceptions, social sustainability, and the use of public and private data to improve destination management.
This approach reflects a broader transformation: managing tourism increasingly involves measuring its impacts and being accountable for them.
Governance thus becomes a key component of the sector?s ESG agenda. It is no longer just a matter of reducing emissions or introducing environmental criteria, but also of determining how decisions are made, who participates in them, which indicators are used, and how the benefits and pressures arising from tourism activities are distributed.