Here’s one way to think about it:

Imagine someone is visiting Hawaiʻi and wants to experience the islands “authentically”:

• A traditional tourism experience might be designed primarily around what visitors want to see and do: attending a large lūʻau, receiving a purple orchid lei, eating from a buffet, and watching a performance — perhaps with little context about the people, practices, or place behind the experience.

• A sustainable tourism experience might ask how that same experience can be offered more responsibly: keeping groups smaller, sourcing locally, reducing waste, sharing more about the history and meaning behind cultural practices, and taking steps to lessen tourism’s impact on the place and community.

• A regenerative tourism experience starts somewhere different. It begins with the people and place that make the experience possible: What do they value? What do they want to share? What needs care? And how can tourism contribute? The resulting experience might invite visitors to learn directly from cultural practitioners, spend time working in a traditional agricultural system, or participate in caring for a place — with the experience shaped by the knowledge, priorities, and intentions of those who host them.

In regenerative tourism, the visitor is a vital and valued partner, but they aren’t the starting point. The experience begins with place, community, and what matters to the people who care for them. Visitors are then invited into that relationship to listen, learn, participate, contribute, and be delighted in ways that support the places that host their own experience.