Winner
Book Title:Destination Stewardship: Drive Sustainability, Economic Renewal, and Cultural Integrity
Author:Tonya Fitzpatrick
Published:2026
How is your book helping others?
Tourism creates jobs and opportunity, but growth is not responsible if residents bear costs, lose cultural identity, or have little voice in decisions shaping their communities. Destination Stewardship shows how to change that. It gives tourism leaders and policymakers practical governance tools to make residents partners in decision-making, keep more visitor spending local, strengthen local ownership, reinvest tourism revenue in communities, protect culture and nature, and measure success by community well-being—not volume alone. It challenges travelers to rethink how they show up in someone else’s home: where they spend, whose stories they honor and what they leave behind. Destination Stewardship Center founder Jonathan Tourtellot titled his review “The First True Book on Destination Stewardship.” The book turns stewardship into a roadmap for responsible tourism growth that advances local agency, cultural integrity, shared prosperity and places worth living in as well as visiting.