Last updated on November 7th, 2023
Anna Pollock is the founder of Conscious Travel, an alternative model to mass industrial tourism that develops conscious hosts capable of generating a higher net return for their business and host community.
Based on an extensive career as a researcher, strategist and change catalyst serving the international tourism and hospitality sector, she is passionate about its capacity to generate well-being, wealth and welfare for people and places provided that it is managed properly i.e. with respect for the interdependence and connectedness of all life and in harmony with the laws of nature.
Anna says: “I have been privileged to live during the same period that tourism has grown and developed to a force transporting over 1.2 billion people across international borders each year and to be able to apply my strengths to a sector that now operates in every corner of the planet. I also believe that the industrial system on which it is based has run its course and needs replacing. I now work to serve those who wish to expedite that transformation.
I see myself as a sense maker, communicator, and catalyst with a knack and drive to delve beneath surface details in order to discern and describe the shape and power of underlying forces. Since I am driven by curiosity and delight in finding patterns and asking questions, I am comfortable assuming the mantle of ‘constructive non-conformist.'”
Blessed or cursed with the epithet “always ahead of her times” and recognised by the industry as a visionary, she has successfully anticipated and helped shape some key dynamics:
- the emergence of wellness and sustainability in the 1970s;
- the transformative impact of technology on the marketing of tourism;
- the need to shift from a focus on products to the development of experiences;
- the importance of Climate Change and its impact;
- the deep shift in human values that is underpinning the emergence of a more mindful, discerning traveller.
Anna has worked with the Canadian Tourism Commission, PATA, European Travel Commission, Tourism British Columbia, the Australian Tourism Export Council, Tourism Tasmania, Innovation Norway, Visit Flanders, Rotterdam Partners and departments of industry, conservation and tourism in New Zealand. Anna has been a recipient of The Visionary of the Year Award from the Canadian tourism industry and identified as a finalist in Newsweek’s annual Tourism Visionary Awards. Learn more about Anna here.
