World Tourism Day 2025: Building a More Sustainable, Inclusive, and Diverse Future for Travel

On September 27, the global community comes together to celebrate World Tourism Day (WTD). This annual holiday recognizes the vital role tourism plays in shaping economies, fostering cultural understanding, and connecting people across borders.

The WTD theme for 2025 was “Tourism and Sustainable Transformation” — something that today resonates more deeply than ever. It's not just about where we travel, but how we travel. And increasingly, it’s about who gets to be part of the journey.

The Link Between Sustainability & Inclusivity in Tourism

At first glance, sustainable tourism and inclusive travel may seem like completely separate goals. Sustainable tourism is focused on protecting the environment. Inclusive travel looks to ensure equal access and representation. However, when you dig deeper, they are the flip sides of the same coin, deeply interconnected pillars of a healthier and more responsible tourism industry.

Sustainable tourism calls for minimizing environmental impacts, supporting local communities, and preserving cultural heritage. But we have to ask the question: Who benefits from these efforts? And who gets to participate in shaping the future of travel? A sustainable tourism model that doesn’t include diverse voices, marginalized groups, and underrepresented communities is incomplete.

Creating an inclusive tourism industry, where people of all abilities, backgrounds, identities, and income levels can engage with and benefit from travel, is a moral and practical necessity. When tourism is inclusive, it uplifts more communities, redistributes economic benefits more equitably, and ensures that authentic cultural narratives aren’t lost or diluted. Sustainable travel efforts should do more than preserve natural landscapes. They should preserve diverse communities.

Encouraging Sustainability in Tourism

A key focus of World Tourism Day 2025 is the growing global commitment to sustainable tourism practices. As the industry faces mounting pressure to reduce its environmental footprint, stakeholders are being called to take action. This includes:

• Reducing carbon emissions through sustainable transport and accommodation.
• Preserving natural and cultural heritage by protecting sensitive environments and respecting local traditions.
• Supporting local economies, ensuring tourism revenue benefits the people and places being visited.
• Promoting responsible travel behavior among tourists to reduce exploitation and over-tourism.

These sustainability goals align directly with inclusivity. Community-based tourism projects often empower indigenous and rural communities to share their culture on their own terms, while earning income in the process. By putting communities at the center, we can build a model of tourism that is both inclusive and sustainable.

Inclusivity in Action: Diversity Marketing in South Carolina

Recently, TURNER worked with Discover South Carolina to generate media awareness of Gullah Geechee and Black culture throughout the destination. These South Carolinians’ time-honored traditions and heritage have shaped the state’s Lowcountry for more than 200 years.

Black owned businesses are a staple of South Carolina tourism, but in the past, they have not received their well-deserved spotlight. To overcome this, TURNER and Discover South Carolina developed a wide-ranging strategy that highlighted amazing Black owned businesses and Black South Carolinians, as well as the historical and current significance of the Gullah Geechee people in the state.

Our efforts resulted in 29 stories, including such high-profile pieces as Dana Given’s search for her Gullah roots in the Food & Wine article A New Yorker's Journey to South Carolina to Retrace Her Gullah Roots and DeAnna Taylor’s Travel Noire feature How To Spend 48-Hours In Black-Owned Charleston, SC. By putting the spotlight on these communities and cultures, we wanted to help ensure that they survived and thrived in the decades to come — to sustain this specific part of the destination so that visitors could experience it authentically.

Tourism as a Driver of Global Unity

Beyond economic numbers and carbon footprints, tourism has an unmatched ability to foster global unity. When done right, it breaks down barriers, encourages empathy, and promotes mutual respect across cultures. It brings together people who may never otherwise meet and introduces travelers to the richness of human diversity.

Just a few examples of travel organizations doing responsible, inclusive travel right include:

• Big Five Tours & Expeditions: Driven by the belief that tourism and sustainability can go hand-in-hand, Big Five supports cultural heritage, delivers local economic benefits, and furthers cross-cultural understanding.
• Explora Journeys: Offering accessible cruises with wheelchair-friendly suites, barrier-free spaces, and mobility equipment rentals, Explora delivers a seamless voyage for travelers of all abilities.
• Xanterra Travel Collection: With the motto “Legendary Hospitality with a Softer Footprint®,” Xanterra not only works to protect the National Parks it partners with, it also offers offer thoughtfully crafted menu options to accommodate a wide range of diets, including gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, vegetarian, vegan, and more

World Tourism Day 2025 serves as a reminder that tourism should be a force for good — for the planet, for the people, and for future generations. The industry has the power to be a leader in sustainability while also advancing equity, accessibility, and inclusion.