I Almost Deleted the Email: Why Destination Stewardship Matters

I almost deleted the email.

A publisher reached out and asked if I’d ever thought about writing a book. My first instinct was that it had to be spam, so I did what I always do when something doesn’t feel quite right — I set the message aside. Then two weeks later I contacted a friend in London and asked if she’d ever heard of Kogan Page, a UK-based publisher. She had, and she didn’t hesitate. She told me they were highly respected and that authors genuinely loved working with them. That was the moment I paused and thought… maybe this is real.

At the time, it didn’t feel like the beginning of anything. It was just one of those moments where you decide to follow up instead of ignoring it.

The Kind of Travel Stories That Stay With You

When World Footprints launched in 2005, the goal was simple: tell better travel stories. Not the kind built around lists or highlights, but the kind that stay with you long after the trip is over. Stories about people, culture, and the meaning behind a place.

That work has always been shaped, quietly, by the idea of Ubuntu — “I am because we are.” It’s not something that needs to be explained when you’re in it, but it changes how you move through the world. You notice different things. You ask different questions.

Over time, that way of seeing started to extend beyond storytelling and into how tourism itself shows up.

What You Notice When You Pay Attention

Spend enough time in different places and patterns start to emerge.

There are destinations where tourism feels balanced. Where communities are still at the center of the experience and what’s being shared feels grounded in something real. And then there are places like Barcelona where residents actually protest tourism, and other places where something feels slightly off. Not necessarily wrong, just different in a way that’s hard to explain at first.

Sometimes it shows up in small ways — a shift in tone, a sense that something has been adjusted or softened. Other times it’s more obvious. But once you notice it, you don’t really stop noticing.

That stayed with me.

The Book I Didn’t Plan to Write

Writing a business book about tourism wasn’t something I had set out to do. But when I thought about what Kogan Page was asking for, it started to make sense.

Because the experiences travelers have don’t just happen. They’re shaped by decisions being made long before anyone arrives — decisions about growth, about who benefits, about what gets protected and what doesn’t.

That’s what led to Destination Stewardship: Drive Sustainability, Economic Renewal, and Cultural Integrity.

It’s not about slowing tourism down for the sake of it. It’s about paying closer attention to how it grows and what that growth means for the places that carry it.

Why Growth Alone Doesn’t Tell the Story

Tourism does a lot of good. It creates opportunity, supports economies, and connects people in ways that can be genuinely meaningful.

But growth on its own doesn’t tell you much.

More visitors doesn’t necessarily mean a better outcome for a community. It doesn’t tell you whether local culture is being preserved or reshaped, or whether a place still feels like itself to the people who live there.

Those are harder things to measure, but they’re the ones that tend to matter most over time.

Holding on to What Makes a Place a Place

One of the things that comes up again and again in this work is cultural integrity. It’s not always visible in the way people expect, but it’s there in how a place feels, in what’s shared, and in what isn’t.

When tourism grows without much thought, those lines can start to blur. Traditions shift. Spaces change. Things that once existed for a community begin to exist for an audience.

That doesn’t always happen all at once. It happens gradually, and often with the best intentions. But it’s the kind of change that, once it takes hold, is hard to reverse.

A Moment That Makes You Look Back

Not long after the book was released, Hachette UK announced it is acquiring Kogan Page. It wasn’t something that had anything to do with the decision to write, but it did make the timing feel a little surreal.

It also made me think about how easily this could have gone another way. If that email had been deleted, or if it had been dismissed, or if I hadn’t turned my manuscript in on time, this book might not exist.

There’s no way to know what would have happened instead.

But it does make you pay attention to the moments you almost ignore.

If this is a conversation you’ve been seeing in your own work or travels, I explore it more deeply in:

📖 Destination Stewardship: Drive Sustainability, Economic Renewal, and Cultural Integrity

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kogan Page and other online platforms.

 

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