Download the full report here
Tourism in York is thriving, and for decades, the success of the sector has largely been measured through numbers. We count visitors, hotel occupancy, economic impact, jobs supported and visitor spend. These metrics have become so deeply embedded within tourism policy and destination management that they are often accepted without question as indicators of success. They undoubtedly have value, and understanding the contribution tourism makes to local economies is important, particularly at a time when public investment is under increasing scrutiny and destinations are expected to demonstrate return on investment. Yet there is an uncomfortable truth at the heart of how we evaluate tourism… we’ve become exceptionally good at measuring the economic value, but remarkably poor at measuring what tourism actually does for the people who live in the places that visitors come to experience.
As tourism has evolved, so too have the expectations placed upon it. Increasingly, destinations speak about regenerative tourism, inclusive growth, community wealth building and place stewardship. Tourism strategies now routinely reference improving residents’ quality of life alongside attracting visitors. However, our systems for measuring success have not kept pace with this changing narrative. While environmental indicators have rightly become more prominent and resident sentiment surveys are beginning to appear in more destinations, much of what makes tourism valuable to communities remains invisible. We rarely ask whether tourism has strengthened local relationships, expanded opportunities, increased confidence, deepened people’s connection to place or enabled communities to participate more fully in shaping their own futures. These are difficult things to quantify, but that does not make them any less important. In many ways, they are the outcomes that matter most.
This is where a capability approach offers a fundamentally different way of thinking about tourism. Originally developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, it shifts the conversation away from simply measuring resources, outputs or economic returns. Instead, it asks a deceptively simple question – what are people actually able to do and be because of a particular policy, investment or intervention? Rather than focusing solely on what tourism produces, it asks what tourism enables, and recognises that the true value of development lies not simply in creating economic activity, but in expanding people’s real freedoms and opportunities to live the lives they value. Capabilities are the opportunities people have available to them and that shape the things they are ultimately able to achieve because those opportunities exist. The distinction may appear subtle, but it transforms the way we evaluate success.
Applied to tourism, this means looking beyond visitor spending and asking whether tourism creates meaningful opportunities for local people. Does it enable residents to access cultural spaces they previously felt excluded from? Does it create environments where communities can meet, learn from one another and build relationships? Does it encourage local businesses to collaborate rather than compete? Does it provide fair employment that offers progression rather than simply seasonal work? Does it strengthen a sense of belonging, pride and attachment to place? These questions are rarely found within conventional tourism evaluation frameworks, yet they are central to understanding whether tourism is contributing to stronger, healthier and more resilient communities.
Traditional evaluation methods tend to focus on outcomes such as income, training or infrastructure, but they often overlook the factors that determine whether people are actually able to benefit from these resources. Two people may be presented with exactly the same opportunity yet experience very different outcomes because of differences in age, disability, income, social networks or where they live. The capability approach recognises these personal, social and environmental conversion factors and reminds us that simply creating opportunities is not enough, and that we must also understand who is able to access them and who continues to be excluded. In tourism, this has profound implications. A festival may exist, but is it accessible? A volunteering opportunity may be available, but does everyone have the time, confidence or transport to participate? A heritage attraction may be restored, but does it feel welcoming to local communities? These questions challenge us to think about tourism not simply as an industry, but as part of a wider social system.
Good Organisation’s recent pilot research, undertaken in partnership with the Policy Co-op, sought to explore how this way of thinking could be translated into something practical. Working with three very different examples of community-led tourism in York, we examined not simply their economic contribution but the capabilities they helped create for local people. Although each organisation operated in different ways, remarkably similar themes emerged. People spoke about discovering new places within their own city, building relationships with others, learning new skills, developing confidence, accessing spaces that had previously felt inaccessible, creating opportunities for collaboration and strengthening their attachment to York itself. These are not incidental benefits, but are precisely the kinds of social value that community-led tourism can generate, which conventional tourism metrics almost entirely overlook.
Visitor numbers, employment and business performance remain essential, but capability indicators complement these measures by capturing the wider conditions that enable communities to flourish alongside tourism. They allow destinations to understand not only whether tourism is growing, but whether that growth is creating opportunities that improve people’s everyday lives.
Perhaps the most significant contribution is that they encourage us to measure what communities themselves value, rather than assuming that growth alone represents success. One community may value stronger volunteering networks, another greater access to heritage, another opportunities for young people to develop skills or creative careers, while another may prioritise fair employment or vibrant neighbourhood spaces. It does not prescribe a universal definition of success…instead, it provides a framework through which destinations can understand whether tourism is expanding the freedoms and opportunities that local people themselves consider important. This is particularly relevant as more destinations come to understand the importance of community-led tourism, recognising that resilient visitor economies are built not simply on attracting more visitors, but on ensuring local people benefit meaningfully from their presence.
There is also an important policy implication. Local authorities and destination management organisations increasingly talk about evidence-based decision making, yet many of the social claims made about tourism remain difficult to evidence because we have never systematically measured them. If tourism is said to improve wellbeing, strengthen communities or support inclusive growth, we should be able to demonstrate how and for whom. Capability indicators begin to fill this gap. They provide destinations with a baseline against which change can be monitored over time, enabling policymakers to move beyond anecdote and aspiration towards a richer understanding of tourism’s contribution to place. They also create opportunities to compare different interventions, understand what works and identify where additional investment or policy change may be needed.
This represents a significant shift in how we think about destination management. Rather than asking only how tourism can become bigger, capability indicators encourage us to ask how tourism can become better. They invite us to recognise businesses not simply as economic actors, but as community anchors, where festivals are not merely as visitor attractions, but as spaces for creativity, belonging and learning, and where heritage is not simply as an asset to be consumed, but something that strengthens identity and stewardship, and where local people are not passive recipients of tourism’s impacts, but active participants in shaping the future of their places.
As destinations across the UK and internationally grapple with challenges such as housing affordability, climate change, inequalities, labour shortages and declining trust in institutions, tourism will increasingly be expected to demonstrate that it creates public value as well as private profit. Doing so requires new ways of measuring success. Counting visitors will always matter. Measuring economic impact will always matter. But if tourism is genuinely about creating better places to live as well as better places to visit, then our evaluation frameworks must reflect that ambition.
The next generation of tourism indicators should not simply tell us how many people came, how much they spent or how long they stayed. They should also tell us whether tourism strengthened communities, widened opportunity, improved wellbeing, fostered collaboration, created fairer work, deepened people’s connection to place and enabled more people to participate in shaping the places they call home. Ultimately, the success of tourism should not be judged solely by the experiences it creates for visitors, but by the capabilities it creates for the people who live there. That is fundamental to the work of Good Organisation, and perhaps its greatest value to the future of destination management.
Local Community Policy Social Commentary Tourism
What Are We Really Measuring? Rethinking Success in Tourism
Download the full report here
Tourism in York is thriving, and for decades, the success of the sector has largely been measured through numbers. We count visitors, hotel occupancy, economic impact, jobs supported and visitor spend. These metrics have become so deeply embedded within tourism policy and destination management that they are often accepted without question as indicators of success. They undoubtedly have value, and understanding the contribution tourism makes to local economies is important, particularly at a time when public investment is under increasing scrutiny and destinations are expected to demonstrate return on investment. Yet there is an uncomfortable truth at the heart of how we evaluate tourism… we’ve become exceptionally good at measuring the economic value, but remarkably poor at measuring what tourism actually does for the people who live in the places that visitors come to experience.
As tourism has evolved, so too have the expectations placed upon it. Increasingly, destinations speak about regenerative tourism, inclusive growth, community wealth building and place stewardship. Tourism strategies now routinely reference improving residents’ quality of life alongside attracting visitors. However, our systems for measuring success have not kept pace with this changing narrative. While environmental indicators have rightly become more prominent and resident sentiment surveys are beginning to appear in more destinations, much of what makes tourism valuable to communities remains invisible. We rarely ask whether tourism has strengthened local relationships, expanded opportunities, increased confidence, deepened people’s connection to place or enabled communities to participate more fully in shaping their own futures. These are difficult things to quantify, but that does not make them any less important. In many ways, they are the outcomes that matter most.
This is where a capability approach offers a fundamentally different way of thinking about tourism. Originally developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, it shifts the conversation away from simply measuring resources, outputs or economic returns. Instead, it asks a deceptively simple question – what are people actually able to do and be because of a particular policy, investment or intervention? Rather than focusing solely on what tourism produces, it asks what tourism enables, and recognises that the true value of development lies not simply in creating economic activity, but in expanding people’s real freedoms and opportunities to live the lives they value. Capabilities are the opportunities people have available to them and that shape the things they are ultimately able to achieve because those opportunities exist. The distinction may appear subtle, but it transforms the way we evaluate success.
Applied to tourism, this means looking beyond visitor spending and asking whether tourism creates meaningful opportunities for local people. Does it enable residents to access cultural spaces they previously felt excluded from? Does it create environments where communities can meet, learn from one another and build relationships? Does it encourage local businesses to collaborate rather than compete? Does it provide fair employment that offers progression rather than simply seasonal work? Does it strengthen a sense of belonging, pride and attachment to place? These questions are rarely found within conventional tourism evaluation frameworks, yet they are central to understanding whether tourism is contributing to stronger, healthier and more resilient communities.
Traditional evaluation methods tend to focus on outcomes such as income, training or infrastructure, but they often overlook the factors that determine whether people are actually able to benefit from these resources. Two people may be presented with exactly the same opportunity yet experience very different outcomes because of differences in age, disability, income, social networks or where they live. The capability approach recognises these personal, social and environmental conversion factors and reminds us that simply creating opportunities is not enough, and that we must also understand who is able to access them and who continues to be excluded. In tourism, this has profound implications. A festival may exist, but is it accessible? A volunteering opportunity may be available, but does everyone have the time, confidence or transport to participate? A heritage attraction may be restored, but does it feel welcoming to local communities? These questions challenge us to think about tourism not simply as an industry, but as part of a wider social system.
Good Organisation’s recent pilot research, undertaken in partnership with the Policy Co-op, sought to explore how this way of thinking could be translated into something practical. Working with three very different examples of community-led tourism in York, we examined not simply their economic contribution but the capabilities they helped create for local people. Although each organisation operated in different ways, remarkably similar themes emerged. People spoke about discovering new places within their own city, building relationships with others, learning new skills, developing confidence, accessing spaces that had previously felt inaccessible, creating opportunities for collaboration and strengthening their attachment to York itself. These are not incidental benefits, but are precisely the kinds of social value that community-led tourism can generate, which conventional tourism metrics almost entirely overlook.
Visitor numbers, employment and business performance remain essential, but capability indicators complement these measures by capturing the wider conditions that enable communities to flourish alongside tourism. They allow destinations to understand not only whether tourism is growing, but whether that growth is creating opportunities that improve people’s everyday lives.
Perhaps the most significant contribution is that they encourage us to measure what communities themselves value, rather than assuming that growth alone represents success. One community may value stronger volunteering networks, another greater access to heritage, another opportunities for young people to develop skills or creative careers, while another may prioritise fair employment or vibrant neighbourhood spaces. It does not prescribe a universal definition of success…instead, it provides a framework through which destinations can understand whether tourism is expanding the freedoms and opportunities that local people themselves consider important. This is particularly relevant as more destinations come to understand the importance of community-led tourism, recognising that resilient visitor economies are built not simply on attracting more visitors, but on ensuring local people benefit meaningfully from their presence.
There is also an important policy implication. Local authorities and destination management organisations increasingly talk about evidence-based decision making, yet many of the social claims made about tourism remain difficult to evidence because we have never systematically measured them. If tourism is said to improve wellbeing, strengthen communities or support inclusive growth, we should be able to demonstrate how and for whom. Capability indicators begin to fill this gap. They provide destinations with a baseline against which change can be monitored over time, enabling policymakers to move beyond anecdote and aspiration towards a richer understanding of tourism’s contribution to place. They also create opportunities to compare different interventions, understand what works and identify where additional investment or policy change may be needed.
This represents a significant shift in how we think about destination management. Rather than asking only how tourism can become bigger, capability indicators encourage us to ask how tourism can become better. They invite us to recognise businesses not simply as economic actors, but as community anchors, where festivals are not merely as visitor attractions, but as spaces for creativity, belonging and learning, and where heritage is not simply as an asset to be consumed, but something that strengthens identity and stewardship, and where local people are not passive recipients of tourism’s impacts, but active participants in shaping the future of their places.
As destinations across the UK and internationally grapple with challenges such as housing affordability, climate change, inequalities, labour shortages and declining trust in institutions, tourism will increasingly be expected to demonstrate that it creates public value as well as private profit. Doing so requires new ways of measuring success. Counting visitors will always matter. Measuring economic impact will always matter. But if tourism is genuinely about creating better places to live as well as better places to visit, then our evaluation frameworks must reflect that ambition.
The next generation of tourism indicators should not simply tell us how many people came, how much they spent or how long they stayed. They should also tell us whether tourism strengthened communities, widened opportunity, improved wellbeing, fostered collaboration, created fairer work, deepened people’s connection to place and enabled more people to participate in shaping the places they call home. Ultimately, the success of tourism should not be judged solely by the experiences it creates for visitors, but by the capabilities it creates for the people who live there. That is fundamental to the work of Good Organisation, and perhaps its greatest value to the future of destination management.