The Invisible Challenge for Destinations: Rethinking Tourism and Place Branding in the Digital Era

Enrolling in the Sustainable Tourism Destination Management program at Cornell University, supported by UN Tourism, has been an opportunity to step back and look at the bigger picture of how tourism works—and how destinations can regain control of their future. One of the readings that left me thinking deeply was Chapter Two of Megan Epler Wood’s Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet, a text that dissects the spider web of global tourism supply chains and exposes the silent paradox that undermines many destinations.

At first glance, tourism looks like an engine of opportunity. 

Planes full of travelers, hotels booked solid, digital platforms flooded with offers, and local experiences wrapped into attractive packages. But beneath this apparent dynamism lies a structural problem: the value created by tourism tends to concentrate in the hands of intermediaries, while destinations—the very reason people travel—often see only fragments of that wealth. 

The case of Cancún is a warning sign: conceived as a planned paradise, it quickly became a mass tourism success but also a textbook example of environmental stress, social imbalance, and the fragility of unmanaged growth.

This paradox is central to anyone working in place branding. 

A destination brand cannot be reduced to a logo, a catchy slogan, or a marketing campaign. It is, at its core, a social contract: a way of defining how a community projects its identity to the world while safeguarding the natural and cultural assets that make it unique. 

When that contract breaks—when promises of authenticity, beauty, or sustainability are not matched by reality—the brand collapses. No amount of promotion can fix a degraded reef, an overbuilt coastline, or a heritage site strained to its limits.

Digitalization makes the challenge even sharper. With more than 60% of bookings now happening online, destinations are competing in an arena dominated by algorithms, keywords, and platforms whose logic often prioritizes scale and price over quality or sustainability. 

This is not inherently negative—digital access democratizes travel and allows smaller players to reach global audiences—but it does raise the question: how can destinations ensure that their stories are told on their own terms, and that value is not drained away by distant platforms? 

For destination managers and brand strategists, the digital layer is no longer just a channel—it is the battlefield where authenticity, visibility, and economic equity are negotiated.

What Epler Wood argues, and what resonates strongly with me, is that sustainability cannot be treated as a side note. It has to become part of the DNA of destination strategy. 

Without robust environmental management, investment in cultural preservation, and empowerment of local actors, the cycle is predictable: growth, overexploitation, and decline. Place branding, therefore, must evolve into a discipline that integrates sustainability at its core, not just as an ethical imperative but as a competitive advantage. 

A destination that tells the world “we are protecting our essence” builds long-term trust, differentiation, and resilience.

This vision also redefines the role of destination managers. They are not only promoters or marketers; they are value guardians. Their task is to coordinate the often-fragmented stakeholders of the tourism chain—hotels, airlines, operators, governments, communities—and align them under a shared narrative that preserves and grows the capital of the place. In this sense, destination managers embody the balance between the local and the global, between protecting fragile territorial capital and navigating the realities of a digital economy that rewards speed and visibility.

Ultimately, the future of tourism depends on professionals capable of bridging two worlds: the high-tech, data-driven systems of global travel and the very local, tangible needs of communities on the ground. Measuring real impacts, ensuring fair value distribution, and building narratives that are both aspirational and credible will be the next frontier of place branding. 

The success of a destination will no longer be judged by visitor numbers alone, but by how much value it preserves, how fairly it shares that value, and how authentically it tells its story.

Tourism is not just about movement; it is about meaning. 

And if destinations want to remain meaningful in the decades ahead, their brands must be built not only on dreams, but on the discipline of sustainability, the strength of governance, and the courage to protect what truly makes them irreplaceable.