Proceedings and Declaration - Resilient and Regenerative Tourism - Geneva Forum 2025
Resilient and regenerative tourism – Making travel a cross-cutting solution for the Sustainable Development Goals
17th Geneva Forum – Palais des Nations (UN), Geneva – Friday, December 12, 2025
12th Annual International Conference on Resilient and Responsible Travel and Tourism for Peace and Sustainable Development;
Regenerative Tourism as a cross-cutting solution for high-impact transformation projects. Presentation of the cross-cutting impact projects produced during the week.
Gathered at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the participants of the Annual International Conference on Resilient and Regenerative Tourism explored how tourism can become an operational lever for ecological, social, cultural, educational and economic transformation.
The session confirmed that tourism must no longer be conceived only as a sector of leisure, consumption or flows. Because it mobilizes millions of people, territories, infrastructures, heritages, economic chains and imaginaries, it can become a platform for regeneration: creating local jobs, restoring ecosystems, financing impact projects, strengthening communities, enhancing cultures and making travelers useful during their free time.
Regenerative tourism begins when travel no longer merely limits its impacts, but genuinely contributes to improving the places, ecosystems and communities it passes through.
This declaration summarizes the main elements exchanged during the conference, the lessons drawn from the presentations, the operational positions proposed for 2026, as well as the calls for partnerships addressed to States, destinations, tourism operators, NGOs, local authorities, cultural, scientific and educational actors, impact investors and organizations of International Geneva.
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General observation from the presentations
The presentations and discussions of the day converged toward a central observation: regenerative tourism can become one of the most powerful formats for transforming existing economic flows into impact projects, provided it is structured as a system of contribution and not as a simple tourism offer.
- Tourism is a cross-cutting lever because it connects:
- territories,
- jobs,
- cultures,
- landscapes,
- ecosystems,
- transport,
- infrastructures,
- local communities,
- travelers,
- narratives,
- financing,
- and public policies.
- The transition from sustainable tourism to regenerative tourism implies a change of posture:
- no longer only reducing negative impacts,
- but restoring ecosystems,
- strengthening communities,
- revitalizing cultures,
- financing useful actions,
- creating learning opportunities,
- and making travelers actors of positive transformation.
- The Conference also showed that regenerative tourism is becoming strategic for International Geneva:
- it can give economic form to humanitarian, social, ecological and educational projects,
- it can open new sources of impact finance,
- it can make complex projects visible,
- it can bring together actors who are not used to working together,
- and it can transform global challenges into concrete and mobilizing experiences.
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