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Tourism ‘brains trust’ visits Brisbane for EarthCheck Inner Circle Forum
EARTHCHECK, regarded by many in the travel and tourism industry as the world’s leading business advisory group in sustainable tourism, is bringing leading tourism futurists and thought leaders to Brisbane on May 23-24 as part of the EarthCheck Inner Circle International Tourism Forum.
Held overseas for the past eight years, this is the first time EarthCheck’s annual signature event has been held in Australia. This year’s forum is premised on disruption and transformation in the global tourism economy.
“Travel and tourism help people to connect with the rest of the world,” EarthCheck founder and CEO Stewart Moore said.
“We now have a new generation of globally connected consumers who behave very differently – and we must adapt to these changes and take advantage of the new opportunities. 
“We think this is the perfectly timed next step for connection with the tourism sector in a phase of exceptional growth. Brisbane is aiming to turbocharge local tourism enterprises, create new jobs and employment opportunities and bring social and cultural benefits to Queenslanders as outlined in the recent launch of the Brisbane Tourism Investment Guide,” Mr Moore said.
Talking to disruption and future markets will be guest speaker, Jonathan Yaffe, the San Francisco-based CEO and co-founder of AnyRoad, an experience relationship management (ERM) platform that turns real-life experiences into valuable and actionable data.
“We’re building the Salesforce for offline engagement, which is possible now because data allows us to predict how experiences change behaviour,” Mr Yaffe said. “I want to create a better understanding of experiences and how they impact our behaviour.
“We’re in a massive cultural and economic shift from a things economy to the experience economy, and it’s having a profound impact on business, behaviour, and inclusion. Traditional retail is dead as the few innovative companies redefine themselves as experiential companies, and millennials are leading the way in eschewing collecting things in favour of collecting experiences.
“I believe we are in the right place surfing this wave, and we’ll be the data platform that underlies it,” Mr Yaffe said.
The EarthCheck Inner Circle Forum has gained a reputation for its ability to track market challenges and identify practical solutions to some of the major environmental, technology and social issues facing the global travel and tourism industry.
“The world is changing and a key focus of the Inner Circle Forum is to bring influential leaders and operators together to discuss the shift in consumer expectations, the visitor economy, destination planning and management. The visitor economy is crucial to future economic development and job creation,” EarthCheck’s Stewart Moore said.
“Our goal for Inner Circle, as always, is to empower industry leaders to take forward the knowledge shared at the event and apply this to their own operations and destinations. As globalisation progresses and various issues become more intertwined, the 21st century global tourism landscape is remarkably different from its 20th century predecessor,” Mr Moore said.
“Experiential purchases, such as holidays, tours, concerts, etc, tend to bring consumers more enduring happiness than material purchases, such as a retail buy. Tourism and visitor related experiences are now widely defined as the visitor economy referring to overall demand and supply across all sectors within which visitor activity and its direct or indirect consequences upon the economy take place.”
During the two-day forum international experts will discuss a wide range of sustainable tourism topics relating to the important future role for tourism development including the experience economy and the role of big data, the age of wellness, shifts in the global management and ownership of hotels and convention and exhibition centres, climate change and building more resilient destinations, navigating the circular economy and making places and spaces for visitors and luxury.
“We are excited and pleased that so many influential tourism leaders from the around the world have committed to speak at Inner Circle this month,” Mr Moore said.
“The forum enables industry leaders to translate their knowledge and experience into actionable outcomes.”
EarthCheck is a Brisbane-based business advisory group which specialises in destination management and sustainable tourism. The company is renowned for its science and its dedication to evidence-based research and innovation. It also operates the EarthCheck benchmarking and certification program which is now delivered in over 70 countries in six languages and across 32 sectors.
In 2017 EarthCheck won the Queensland Government’s and QTICs Innovation award for its Building Planning and Design Standard which is used to guide the sustainable design of buildings and infrastructure. In the same year it also won an innovation award from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
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