Tourism Destination Resilience

PATA’s Tourism Destination Resilience (TDR) programme was developed to help destinations recover from the COVID-19 crisis and, at the same time, prepare them for future crises that will come. The end-goal is to help build a more resilient tourism industry.

Resilience As A Solution

Tourism Destination Resilience is essential for sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Without resilience, a destination would never be able to maintain its sustainability efforts. Years of progress on regenerating an ecosystem or eliminating poverty, for example, could be lost in one disaster. This is why we advocate that for a tourism destination to be sustainable, it must first be resilient.

How Can We Help?

PATA’s Tourism Destination Resilience (TDR) programme enables destinations to withstand adversity and bounce forward from crises and disasters through three main steps:

  • risk assessment (identifying the risks in a destination); 

  • risk management (preparing for and recovering from crises); and 

  • adaptive capacity (adapting to the inevitable changes that arise from crises).

To help destinations build capacity around these three main steps, PATA has built a TDR course consisting of ten (10) online modules that cover all the necessary steps towards destinations’ resilience and long-term sustainability.

Start Building Towards Resilience Today By:

Assess Your Destination’s Resilience

Start Assessment

Take PATA’s Complimentary Tourism Resilience Course

View Courses

Book a 30-min consultation with PATA

Contact Us

The potential high-level outcomes of the TDR Programme, for a Destination are:

  1. Understanding the need to transition away from destination marketing towards destination management and stewardship.

  2. Identifying the key capacities that need to be strengthened in the destination in order to build resilience.

  3. Reframing the destination’s values and business models to be more holistic, thus including diverse stakeholders in a destination’s journey towards resilience.

  4. Recognising the long-term benefits of resilience for the community, the environment and the economy.

  5. Understanding how to secure investments for resilience programs and projects.

Tailored Solutions​

Each destination has unique challenges, and every tourism system is fundamentally complex. While the TDR Programme offers a basic framework for destinations to kickstart their journey towards resilience, PATA offers additional advisory services that help to tailor solutions to your destination.

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Supporting Partners

What Our Experts Say About Us

John Bailey – Managing Consultant, Global Communications Consulting

“The key to crisis management is to identify potential risks, then seek to reduce their likely impact. Preparing for unexpected shocks or disruptions is an essential element of planning, and you should not wait for a crisis to happen to put a plan in place.”

Matteo Bierschneider – Co-founder, Wise Steps Indonesia

“Capacity building is arguably the most important tool to turn strategies, action plans and risk reduction agendas into living policies by equipping the people with the right skills.”

Mark Evidente – CEO, TwoEco, Inc.

“While much has already been said about the need to make the travel industry more sustainable, true sustainability that meets the needs of future generations requires that we plan and adapt to triumph over crises.”

Nerissa Juan – Division Chief, Tourism Promotions Board Philippines

"TDR is an innovative programme because it provides a holistic framework, which encompasses not only natural disasters and pandemics, but also a wide range of challenges particular to tourism destinations."

Frequently Asked Questions

The courses are open-source and can be used by any tourism stakeholder, compliments of PATA, GIZ & BMZ.
Yes. Although the modules have a strong appeal for public sector DMOs, they are of equal interest for any tourism professional or student interested in learning how to increase destination resilience.
Yes. After you complete a module’s quiz, a course completion certificate will be available for download. After completing the final quiz for all 10 modules, you will also receive a full TDR course certificate if you reach a minimum score of 80%.

You can try to reach the minimum score of 80% as many times as you need.
It takes on average one hour to complete each module.

Please fill in the form here to indicate interest in a consultation with one of our experts. We will reach out to you to schedule a date and time.

The TDR project is implemented by the Pacific Asia Travel Association with support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

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