This year, Anna Pollock, Founder of Conscious.Travel, is celebrating 52 years’ experience in tourism as an independent consultant, strategist, international speaker and change agent and currently is an acclaimed thought leader in the emerging field of Regenerative Tourism. Her focus and skill are in being able to understand the larger context of change in which tourism operates and to interpret the implications for the tourism sector. She shares her thinking having written over 200 posts and articles since 2010.
Anna has undertaken seminal work in tourism, notably in education, sustainability, technology, and now regenerative thinking. In the 1990s, she was a thought leader on the strategic implications of the Internet; and created the first internet-based tourism strategy for Scotland. In 2007, she produced one of the first reports on the impact of climate change for the Canadian tourism industry.
In October 2016, Visit Flanders retained Anna to support their Travel to Tomorrow program that over a two-year period shifted their official policy from volume growth to destination flourishing. This community-based work was subsequently applied by three regions and recently won an award from the European LEADER program.
As the first ever regional tourism strategy in New Zealand to integrate regenerative principles was clearly influenced by Anna’s work, she was invited –as the only non-New Zealander – to contribute to the Tourism Futures Task Force that produced its report We Are Aotearoa in January 2021. Through her speaking engagements, educational and academic papers, Anna has become recognised as a leading proponent of regenerative thinking in tourism and hospitality.
Anna is recipient of TheVisionary of the Year Award from the Canadian tourism industry; finalist in the Visionary Category of the Newsweek Future Travel Awards in2021; and in 2022 was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to tourism by the Journey Women publication.
Anna's current focus is the nexus between hospitality, farming and food. Anna is currently working with Regenerative Vanua in Vanuatusupporting resilient and climate smart communities restore pride in Indigenous food culture, through regenerative agri tourism and community development.