Professionals & practitioners 

VMAST - UNESCOs Visitor Management Assessment & Strategy Tool

>> for improving the benefits of tourism through strategic visitor management

Responsible tourism development and visitor management is an essential part of the management responsibility and challenge of site management authorities. However, an increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, and where budgets to appoint expertise is scarce, it is difficult for heritage and tourism professionals to operate. 

So what could heritage and tourism professionals do to enhance their processional capacity, provide relevant and cost efficient services?

VMAST was specifically developed to help World Heritage site management authorities monitor and improve visitor management for the protection of World Heritage sites and at the same time contribute towards the local development objectives. As a generally applicable tool and framework, VMAST is also relevant as a resource and tool in the work of heritage and tourism professionals and practitioners. 

VMAST supports:

Monitoring  >  Improved understanding

Budgeted activities  >  Feasible ambitions

Communication  >  Improved outreach

Capacity development  >  Strengthened capacities

Collaboration  >  Increased impact 

More about VMAST

WHETS - World Heritage Exchange Trading Systems

>> for improving provisioning through moneyless trade and exchange

Community sustainability relies on the resiliency of the local economy. Tourism dependent communities are specifically vulnerable to disruptions in the tourism sector, which may threaten provisioning (access to basic products and services) within a community. 

What could professionals and practitioners do to contribute towards economic resilience and self-sufficiency within the site and broader destination?

First of all, it is important that professionals and practitioners invest in knowledge about the economics to better understand the systemic unsustainability of our current economic growth approach, and drivers that could contribute towards a more circular and possibly regenerative economy. 

WHETS is a portfolio of systems that can improve provisioning through moneyless trade and exchange. Through WHETS professionals and practitioners could learn about and possibly contribute to the adaptation and application of these tools across the sites and communities where they are professionally involved.

WHETS portfolio of systems that could be applied locally:

Mutual credit  >  Means of exchange

Credit clearing  >  Reducing the need for money and banks

Use-credit obligations  >  Means of storing value

Capacity vouchers  >  Allowing consumers to invest spare cash in local retailers

Credit commons  >  For scaling

More about WHETS

WHAO - World Heritage Autonomous Organisations

>> for improving participatory and/or polycentric governance through decentralised technology

The ways we build organisations and involve community stakeholders shape our communities as places to live and visit. 

What can professionals and practitioners do to support participation within strategy development and implementation, and how could multi-stakeholder cooperation in the stewardship of World Heritage be coordinated?

WHAO is an approach to bring the benefits of decentralised (web-3) technologies to the governance of World Heritage. It is emerging from the application of such technologies in organisations in general (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) and World Heritage Catalysis specifically.

By becoming a member of World Heritage Catalysis and start applying these tools, professionals and practitioners will gain safe and relevant experience that could could help other organisations and community initiatives reap the potential benefits of such technologies.

>  Collaborative problem solving

>  Rewarding contributions through tokenomics

>  Secure & transparent voting by citizens and on key issues of interest 

> Secure & decentralised treasury management

>  Transparent organisational governance

More about WHAO