Citizen participation in regenerative tourism governance within a Flemish context

Embedding participatory approaches in tourism planning have become increasingly recognised as critical pathway toward more sustainable and socially equitable policy outcomes. When local communities are actively engaged, research shows this contributes to improved living conditions, more robust democratic processes, and stronger social cohesion, while also increasing public support for tourism initiatives, nurturing collective responsibility, and empowering residents through shared purpose (Sarantakou et al., 2025). However, despite this growing recognition, tourism destinations continue to face systemic challenges: visitor congestion, rising housing costs, loss of local culture, and declining residents' quality of life. Efforts by Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) to involve citizens remain fragmented, often superficial, insufficiently inclusive of marginalised groups. A persistent disconnect exists between the lived experiences of residents and tourism policies pursued by governing bodies, mirroring broader patterns of democratic malaise and eroding institutional trust. This Professional Doctorate investigates how effective citizen participation can be implemented in tourism governance, using Flanders (Belgium) as its primary testing ground. The research pursues three interconnected objectives: (1) developing an evaluation framework for effective citizen participation grounded in academic literature and practitioner perspectives; (2) collecting, evaluating, and testing participatory practices from tourism and adjacent policy domains; (3) clarifying the roles that DMOs, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and citizens must fulfil to enable meaningful participation.
Adopting Participatory Action Research (PAR) as its methodological framework, the PD involves stakeholders (DMOs, CSOs, Citizens) as co-researchers through iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Testing takes place through consultancy projects at IDEA Consult and in collaboration with Visit Flanders, followed by short- and long-term evaluations with practitioners and citizens. The anticipated outputs include an evaluation framework, a white paper compiling lessons from evaluated and tested cases, and two practical toolkits: one for tourism professionals and one for citizens, contributing to more inclusive, community-centred tourism governance.