Frameworks
Analytical Tools
Four frameworks developed through field research and critical analysis. Each is a lens — a way of seeing tourism that makes different questions possible.
01
Micro-Destination Innovation Model
Randall Lacle
Core premise
Tourism happens at neighborhood level — not destination level. The unit of innovation is the street, the district, the corridor.
Structure
Place
Physical and cultural character of the micro-destination. What makes it distinct.
Stakeholders
Enterprises, community organizations, local residents, DMO, and governance actors.
Experience flow
How visitors actually move through the space — entry, discovery, friction points, and value moments.
Value distribution
Who captures economic value, who absorbs the costs, and whether the balance is sustainable.
Developed through field research in Aruba, Sanur (Bali), and Barcelona.
02
Tourism Experience Chain
Randall Lacle
Core premise
Guest experience is not created by a hotel or an attraction — it is co-created through a chain of people and places.
Structure
Place
The destination provides the setting — its character, identity, and spatial quality are the canvas.
Employee
Frontline workers are value agents, not just service providers. Their engagement, knowledge, and autonomy shape every guest interaction.
Guest
Visitors co-create the experience through their own presence, behavior, and interpretation.
Place (returns)
The guest experience feeds back into how the place is perceived, valued, and maintained. The loop is continuous.
Built from service quality research (Lacle, 2013) and guest experience theory.
03
Service to Stewardship
Randall Lacle
Core premise
The relationship between a guest and a destination does not stop at service quality. It can progress — through experience, connection, and responsibility — toward genuine stewardship.
Structure
Service
The baseline: reliable, professional, responsive. The foundation without which nothing else is possible.
Experience
Something memorable. The point where the transaction becomes a moment.
Connection
The guest feels something for the place, its people, its character. This is where loyalty and advocacy originate.
Responsibility
The guest begins to care about what happens to the place. Behavioral change follows from this, not from messaging.
Stewardship
The guest becomes a protector — choosing behaviors, making decisions, and advocating for the destination in ways that preserve it.
Developed through sustainability-as-service research and the Aruba governance series.
04
Territory & Power
Alba Millán
Core premise
Tourism does not simply occupy territory — it produces it. Every destination strategy is also a spatial politics: a set of decisions about who shapes the territory, for whose benefit, and at whose expense.
Structure
Production of space
Following Lefebvre: space is not a neutral container. It is actively produced through economic decisions, investment flows, zoning, and infrastructure. Tourism is one of its primary producers.
Capital and displacement
Following Harvey: capital uses space to resolve its own crises of accumulation. Tourism zones, coastal developments, and urban regeneration projects follow this logic — and displace the communities whose labor and culture made the destination attractive in the first place.
Unequal connections
Following Massey: every place is shaped by its connections to global economic systems. Those connections are unequal. Understanding a destination requires understanding who benefits from those connections and who absorbs their costs.
Sustainability as legitimation
Sustainability discourses can function to make growth more acceptable without questioning its territorial conditions. The framework asks: sustainable for whom, under what conditions, and verified by whose indicators?
Community as agent
Against displacement: communities are not obstacles to destination development. They are the conditions of possibility for any tourism worth having. Their participation — in planning, governance, and benefit — is not optional.
Developed through critical geography research, Barcelona field studies (Trinitat Vella, Poblenou, Rec.0), and applied to Aruba territorial analysis.
Read the founding article →These frameworks are tools, not templates.
They are applied in our advisory work — adapted to context, tested against real cases.