Last week, I participated in a two-day workshop on wine tourism in the Canary Islands. I left thinking less about wine, and more about how destinations invite people to actually engage with place.

As someone with family roots in Tenerife, I've seen firsthand how deeply tourism shapes the island. It's impossible to ignore the economic importance of visitors, but the strain is just as visible: priced-out housing, rising costs, and increasingly congested public spaces.

Much of Tenerife's tourism marketing focuses on beaches and year-round sunshine, but the island’s unique draw, in my opinion, is its culture, volcanic landscapes, and agriculture. If those elements were more central to the visitor experience, would people travel differently?

The workshop pushed me to reconsider how we design visitor experiences. Instead of marketing wine tasting as a stand-alone activity, what if visitors paired it with participating in the vendimia (the traditional grape harvest)? Or joined a hands-on workshop in cordón trenzado (a centuries-old method of braiding grapevines native to Tenerife)? Rather than treating a vineyard as a backdrop for consumption, these experiences invite visitors to participate in a living tradition. Could that shift strengthen cultural resilience? Would that make tourism more sustainable?

Which leads to my next question: how do you celebrate local businesses and “off-the-beaten-path” places without exposing them to the very pressures you’re hoping to avoid? I don't have an answer yet, but it's a question I'll continue exploring as I design itineraries for guests staying at Casa Garimba. Maybe sustainable tourism isn’t about managing where people go, but redefining how they are invited to show up.