TMI Student Ambassadors share their key learnings from recent webinar by the (NBTC) TMI Webinar: ‘Sustainability Made Practical for DMOs’

Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC)

TMI Webinar: ‘Sustainability Made Practical for DMOs’ – 26 February 2025

We tasked our TMI Student Ambassadors to share with us their key learnings from this fascinating webinar by the NBTC.

Emma Thompson, final year tourism management student, Liverpool John Moores University has shared her thoughts.

1. What do you find most interesting about the Netherlands Board of Tourism’s sustainability strategy? 

‘A shift away from the traditional tourist volume perspective to an impact management focus was very interesting.  Balancing economic, social and ecological impacts using the triple-bottom line approach, to mitigate bad sentiment from local residents, was something I have just read about, so was good to see in practice.  Doing this by using relevant data and by marketing to nearby countries to lower carbon footprints, was also a very interesting concept.

Their collaboration with 150+ stakeholders to develop a common national sustainable framework, and also working with local regions ensuring everyone bought into the process, seemed key.  Finding practical actionable solutions using a bottom-up approach through data collection was also very interesting.  The tools of sustainable marketing, regulation and long-term climate research would be interesting, to see in action. ‘

2. What are my top 2 takeaways from this presentation?

‘That volume is not everything, quality of tourists with higher spend and environmental capital can be more favourable than targetting saturated tourism markets.

That ‘no man is an island’, success comes by working together in partnership, including the main stakeholders, and it’s so important to work with residents.  None of this can happen however, if there are no clear insights from proper data (e.g. resident sentiment tracking, CO2 impact analysis).’

3. Could any of the NBTC’s sustainability practices work in UK destinations? 

‘There are a few key sustainable practices that could work in the UK.  A national framework needs to be developed with a set of sustainable goals.  DMOs need to include local residents in their strategic plans and track local sentiment in overcrowded cities like London, focusing on what the community needs.  These overcrowded destinations need to look at tourist value rather than just volume.  Marketing needs to shift to higher value customers that are closer to home and have a lower carbon footprint.’

Ellie Morris, TMI Student Ambassador, final year tourism management student at the University of Chester has also shared her key takeaways from this webinar:

‘I found the NBTC market impact scatter graph particularly interesting.  It uses the pillars of sustainatbility and market opportunities to identify their priority overseas target markets.

Good to see they used legislation and marketing to discourage anti-social tourist behaviour in cities like Amsterdam which suffers from overtourism.’

‘In terms of what aspects of their sustainability strategy could be relevant for the UK, I believe the UK could adopt KPIs based on sustainability measures instead of tourism growth which could encourage slower growth tourism but which would have more long term benefit in terms of the environmental impact.

The UK could also consider strengthening the communication across the DMO network as the Netherlands communicate with all their provinces and share resources, advice, marketing techniques and data.  This would be beneficial as the collaboration would lessen competitiveness and give everyone access to reliable date and strengthen the overall tourism industry’.

TMI would like to thank both Emma and Ellie for taking the time to share their valuable insights from this webinar. Please let us know your thoughts!

TMI members can access the recording in the ‘Sustainability resources’ section of the website.