From Visitors to Ambassadors and Stewards: Transforming Tourist Behaviour for Tasmania’s Future

Intended workshop audience: Best suited to tourism operators, guides, destination management organisations, students, tourism professionals, and industry stakeholders looking to create transformational visitor experiences that inspire ambassadorship, stewardship, and deeper connections with place.

Workshop Description: Tasmania has long inspired visitors, but inspiration alone is no longer enough. The next frontier for tourism is behavioural transformation: how we actively shape what visitors do, feel, and become, both during their stay and long after they return home. Leading destinations and businesses are now considered to be those that create ambassadors and stewards for their place, as a result of their experiences.

Drawing on global trends and research, this workshop will explore ways in which ambassadorship and stewardship can be encouraged. It will explore how we can create ambassadors and stewards during their visit. The visitor journey no longer ends at departure. By intentionally designing experiences that inspire, connect and change visitors’ attitudes and behaviour, we can convert visitors into post-visit ambassadors and stewards for Tasmania. These are people who care for and promote Tasmania, support activities within Tasmania upon their return home, and contribute to the destination’s reputation over time. The case of Antarctic tourism and the use of citizen science will be used to demonstrate this exciting new frontier in the visitor experience, and how it can be applied in Tasmania.

Participants in this workshop will leave with tangible strategies to embed behavioural design into tourism experiences, how to influence decisions on a budget, and how to activate ambassadorship and stewardship beyond the trip.

About Anne - Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross University

Professor Anne Hardy is an adjunct professor at Southern Cross University. She is a researcher with a keen interest in tourist behaviour, tourism mobilities and sustainable tourism. Her research has been cited over 4000 times and she is the author of over 100 journal articles, book chapters and books. Some of Anne’s most well-known research is the multiple award-winning project, Tourism Tracer. This project was the first to track tourists, with their consent, for the duration of their holiday throughout entire destinations. Currently it is featured in the Thrive 2030 National visitor economy strategy.

Anne’s international and national reputation for innovative, engaged and impact driven tourism research has led to many industry-funded research projects and a variety of national and international academic invitations to deliver keynote speeches to both industry and academic audiences. She has spoken at events organised by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation One Planet sustainability initiative, World Expo Dubai, and the United Nations Environment Program.

Anne is currently the Chair of Destination Southern Tasmania. Having grown up in Tasmania with parents who were tourism operators, Anne is extremely passionate about the transfer of academic knowledge from academia to the industry.