Why tourism destination stewardship needs better research

Tourism is a significant economic force in Australia. Total visitor expenditure has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, with the national THRIVE 2030 strategy targeting $230 billion in visitor spending by the end of the decade. Yet many destinations have no reliable way to know whether residents want more tourism in their community, whether the experience lived up to visitor expectations, whether visitors actively recommend the experience to others, or whether operators believe the destination is being managed well. That gap is the core problem that destination stewardship research exists to address, and it is a problem that most Australian destinations have not yet seriously attempted to close.

Stewardship is not the same as promotion

Destination stewardship is the practice of managing tourism in ways that balance economic benefit with environmental integrity, cultural sustainability, and community wellbeing. The goal is not simply to attract more visitors but to ensure that the destination remains worth visiting, and worth living in, over the long term. That requires measurement, not just aspiration.

This distinction matters because the interests of different stakeholder groups do not always align. Visitors want an authentic, uncrowded experience. Residents want their amenity and quality of life protected. Operators want sustainable visitor flows and supportive infrastructure. Indigenous communities want cultural integrity and genuine partnership. A destination that surveys only one group gets a partial picture at best and a misleading one at worst.

Four groups, four questions

Effective destination stewardship research covers four core stakeholder groups. Net Promoter Score has become the standard visitor metric in advanced programs because it is a forward-looking indicator of advocacy rather than just satisfaction. A visitor who scores a destination 7 out of 10 is satisfied but will not actively recommend it. A destination tracking only satisfaction may be quietly losing competitive ground without knowing it.

Table 1: Stakeholder groups and primary research questions

What international leaders are doing

Several destinations have built sophisticated multi-stakeholder measurement programs worth examining closely.

Hawaiʻiʻs Resident Sentiment Survey has run since 1988, now surveying close to 2,000 residents twice a year. It tracks perceived benefits versus problems on a 10-point scale and sits alongside visitor expenditure and visitor satisfaction as one of four strategic KPIs reported by the HawaiʻiTourism Authority. The Spring 2024 wave found 56 per cent of residents perceived tourism’s net benefits as positive, up from a pandemic-era low but below historic highs.

New Zealand’s Views on Tourism programme uses a proprietary Tourism Approval Rating (TAR) that runs from +100 to −100, surveying a minimum of 250 residents monthly. The national TAR of 51 sits well above Queenstown’s score of just 20, a Threatened Acceptance rating that would be invisible without regional disaggregation. New Zealand’s measurement architecture also includes a dedicated Māori sentiment stream, which remains the most advanced published effort to integrate Indigenous community voice into national tourism data.

Iceland tracks both visitor and resident sentiment through separate longitudinal programs. Its visitor NPS has ranged from 70 to 86, while its resident survey found that only 8 per cent reported daily disturbance from tourism. Sedona, Arizona remains the most-cited example of a single destination simultaneously surveying visitors, residents, and businesses within a single integrated stewardship plan, a three-group study completed in 2018 and subsequently adopted as a GSTC case study.

Table 2: Selected international destination stewardship programs

Australia is behind, but not far from the starting line

The gap is significant given the scale of what is at stake. Australia’s natural and cultural tourism assets include environments and communities under genuine pressure: heavily visited national parks, World Heritage areas, coastal towns, and Indigenous country. The destinations making the best stewardship decisions internationally are those with reliable, longitudinal data about the communities and landscapes they manage. Measurement is not a compliance exercise; it is the mechanism by which good intentions become accountable practice.

Where to begin

For councils, regional tourism organisations, and destination managers looking to build a measurement foundation, the starting point is a baseline program that captures visitor NPS, resident sentiment, and operator confidence, and that is designed from the outset to be repeated. That baseline becomes the evidence base for every strategic decision that follows: on visitor management, infrastructure investment, environmental monitoring, and community engagement.

The frameworks, metrics, and benchmarks exist and are proven at scale. What has been missing in Australia is the will to apply them systematically at the destination level. Given the pressures that many of Australia’s most-visited places now face, that is a gap worth closing.

Contact Fifth Quadrant if you need support designing and delivering your destination stewardship research program. We bring deep expertise in survey design, and multi-stakeholder research informed by international best practice. To discuss a baseline measurement program for your destination, visit our Social and Government expertise page or contact us at hello@fifthquadrant.com.au.