2025 World Tourism Day Forum
The Challenge: How Can We Sustain and Transform?
Such is tourism’s paradox: a global economic engine built on movement – yet that very movement skirts the edge of collapse. The weight of tourism – environmental, cultural, infrastructural – threatens to erode the very places and communities it depends on. That’s not sustainable. It demands transformation.
At the Center for Responsible Travel’s (CREST’s) 2025 World Tourism Forum, we flip the script:
How can we transform tourism – so we can sustain it? And how can we ensure its benefits protect the places we love and the people who live there?
This year’s theme, Sustainable Transformation, and tagline, “Where Knowledge Sparks Impact,” reflect what CREST stands for: turning insight, research, and local knowledge into real, measurable action.
Why This Forum Is Different
CREST’s World Tourism Forum is not your typical tourism conference. There are no echo chambers or rubber-stamped panels. Stakeholders don’t work in silos – they co-create.
CREST’s annual World Tourism is a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral gathering of researchers, tourism practitioners, community leaders, creatives, academics, and businesses shaping the future of travel. We bring people together from across the globe – and across the street – to work through tourism’s most urgent challenges and boldest opportunities.
This year, in partnership with our amazing co-presenters CARE for the Cape & Islands, we’re delighted to bring our Forum to Cape Cod, Massachusetts – a region where the tension between economic dependence on tourism and the need for ecological and cultural preservation is both urgent and deeply visible.
Why Cape Cod?
Cape Cod is a living case study in sustainable transformation. Here, rising visitor demand intersects with marine conservation. Development pressures collide with climate reality. And centuries-old culture works to stay inclusive without losing its identity.
That’s why we’ve partnered with local nonprofit CARE for the Cape & Islands to host this Forum, grounding global action in local context. From climate action to cultural revitalization, this three-day experience connects the Cape to the world and, in turn, invites the world to learn from the Cape.
Set against the stunning backdrop of the Pelham House Resort, our Marquee Sponsor and values-aligned host venue, this year’s Forum will focus on a bold question:
In order for global destinations – with extra attention to the Cape & Islands – to meet the demands of growing visitor economies while preventing further harm from climate change, overtourism, and technological disruption, how must we sustainably transform?
The World Tourism Forum is a three-day intensive with CREST and 150+ friends from across tourism, development, conservation, and the private sector. Through immersive education sessions, intense workshops, world-class networking, an academic symposium, and hands-on experience, conference attendees will gain insights, find common ground, develop solutions, and get to know one of the world’s most unique cultural destinations.