“We often hear that ‘regenerative travel’ is just a flashy new buzzword, or a rebrand of sustainability. But that couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Natalie Lyall-Grant, head of positive impact at Jacada Travel, one of the finalists of Regenerative Travel’s Impact Awards 2025, in an email interview.
She argued that the ‘leave no trace’ mindset of the sustainability era is no longer sufficient, and that regeneration demands a deeper acknowledgment of tourism’s potential to drive large-scale change.
“Sustainability is the baseline. Regeneration is the evolution,” agreed Hector De Castro, chairman of Regenera Luxury, the world’s first certification for regenerative luxury hotels and retreats, in a video interview.
“While sustainability focuses on reducing harm, regeneration asks you to change your mindset: not only reduce, but improve,” he noted.
Regeneration also requires reconnecting tourism with the ‘real destination,’ the local people, the legacies and the family-run businesses. For him, the mindset shift is about moving beyond key economic indicators and profit targets to create genuinely meaningful, localized impact.
Lyall-Grant also highlighted that without a mindset shift towards positive impact, “we risk losing the distinctive places, landscapes and cultures that form the bedrock of our industry to globalisation, environmental degradation and climate instability.”
How Regenerative Travel Evolved And Why 2026 Is The Tipping Point
The concept of regenerative tourism had first appeared quietly in 2007 in relation to Yulara, a resort town in central Australia, before lying largely dormant for more than a decade.
Instead, sustainable tourism gained recognition in its stead in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when tourism scholars and industry professionals recognized the environmental, social and economic impacts of mass tourism.
However, regenerative tourism resurfaced in 2019 with the launch of Regenerative Travel by Amanda Ho, a global hotel network built around net-positive principles rather than traditional sustainability benchmarks.
In the wake of COVID-19, regenerative tourism surged into academic and industry focus, reshaping debates about the future of travel despite the concept still lacking a universally accepted definition.
By 2024, regenerative tourism had moved beyond theory, with the launch of Regenera Luxury as ‘the world’s first certification for regenerative luxury hotels and retreats.’
Travel companies like Jacada Travel also pioneer “positive impact” trip design that supports conservation, community partnerships and locally led initiatives.
2026 will be the year regenerative travel moves to the forefront, with optimistic, action-oriented and visible initiatives to overtake “the dutiful, expected, even a little apologetic responsible travel,” according to Spotlight Communication’s travel trends report.
Sharon Coleshill, senior account manager at Spotlight Communication, a London-based PR consultancy specialising in luxury travel, put it this way: “Today, every serious hotel treats sustainability as standard; what matters now is what comes next.”
Inside The Metrics: What Should Regenerative Tourism Track
Regeneration primarily focuses on consciously and actively generating a positive impact.
“We need to embrace the concept that we want to impact positively on nature, on people and on future legacy,” said De Castro. “But we also need to create metrics for that. Metrics that are meaningful and make sense and add value.”
Regenera Luxury evaluates hotels using 15 core key performance indicators (KPIs) that, as De Castro explained, “cover more than 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.”
The KPIs blend technical indicators, such as accurate year-round energy consumption data, procurement practices, and employee rotation, with what he calls ’emotional approaches’ that measure community happiness, cultural legacy, guest connection, and integration between visitors and local people.
They also track long-term collective outcomes, such as increases in biodiversity, average local salaries, or the number of schools established.
However, as De Castro pointed out, “the same KPI is not the same reference or the same benchmark in one part of the world or another.”
Standout Regenerative Projects Driving Ecological And Social Renewal
This place-based approach is exactly why regenerative tourism looks different from one destination to the next. When benchmarks shift according to local realities, so do the projects themselves. Around the world, a growing number of initiatives are showing what regeneration looks like when it moves from theory into practice.
Volcanoes Safaris’ Kyambura Wetland Restoration Project in Uganda shows how tourism can actively revive damaged ecosystems. With the help of tourism, the project transforms a former illegal brickworks site into a thriving wetland now home to more than 200 bird species, primates and other wildlife.
Elevate Destinations offers a regenerative itinerary in northern Kenya that immerses travelers in community-led conservation. The trip includes a visit to the Northern Rangelands Trust and its carbon-sequestration initiative and to the Samburu-run wildlife sanctuaries like Reteti, where restored rangelands and strengthened livelihoods go hand in hand.
In Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Asilia Africa’s Erebero Hills project is turning 45 acres of exhausted tea fields into a reforested buffer zone by planting 60,000 indigenous trees, creating jobs for the Batwa and Bakiga communities and expanding habitat for endangered mountain gorillas.
Within South Africa’s UNESCO-listed Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, Few & Far’s Luvhondo lodge pairs biophilic design with carbon-negative operations and hands-on rewilding experiences, enabling guests to participate directly in restoring thousands of hectares of degraded land.
While Africa is full of powerful examples of environmental regeneration, from wildlife conservancies to community-run lodges restoring degraded landscapes, a clear pioneer from Europe comes from Wales.
Bluestone National Park Resort has spent more than a decade transforming former dairy farmland, once described as an “ecological desert,” into a thriving habitat inside Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It focuses on creating biodiverse ecosystems on a land that previously held little to no ecological value.
And its progress has been recognised. The resort became the first holiday property to receive a King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development for becoming a fossil fuel-free resort in September 2025, adopting circular economy principles, providing funding and support to local communities and supporting local and national nature recovery plans.
On the other side of the world, Delfin Amazon Cruises is restoring the Peruvian Amazon through a community-led biocultural restoration program. Under the leadership of biologist Gabriela Orihuela, Delfin is working with riverine communities to reforest abandoned agricultural land, create a 172-hectare restoration corridor along the Marañón River and plant 17 culturally and ecologically important native species.
As Rwanda’s successful revenue-sharing model shows, regeneration isn’t only about restoring nature, but must also strengthen communities.
In Peru, Posada Amazones, operated by Rainforest Expeditions, also channels 75% of its profits directly to the Indigenous Ese Eja de Infierno community, helping protect a 9,500-hectare reserve and supporting stewardship of species such as macaws, caimans and giant river otters.
Regeneration can also take the form of cultural revival, as seen in Medellín’s Comuna 13 tours. Lyall-Grant noted that these tours connect travelers with artists and community leaders to support grassroots storytelling and economic inclusion.
Tourism can meaningfully reduce poverty. Both Pacuare Lodge and Ríos Lodge, bordering the largest indigenous reserve of the Cabecar people in Costa Rica, employ and educate people from nearby Indigenous and rural communities.
Message For 2026: There Is No Way Back
So what is De Castro’s message for the tourism industry? He argues that the sector already has the talent, resources and infrastructure to lead. Therefore, they also have the responsibility to set higher standards rather than wait for others to act.
Without clear values, he warned, it becomes too easy for hotels to take the path of least resistance, following rather than driving the harder, more meaningful work of regeneration.