“We’re committed to community empowerment.”

“Travel as a force for good.”

“Leaving the place better off.”

“From sustainable to regenerative.”

I could shuffle these phrases across different press releases and you wouldn’t know the difference.

As a reporter who spent more than a decade interviewing hundreds of travel executives and entrepreneurs for major media outlets, I’ve seen even those who are meaningfully bringing change fail to gain traction — even after they land an interview.

They’re making a difference in tourism, whether it’s preserving heritage or spreading meaningful economic benefits to locals, but they can’t talk about their work in a way that moves and stands out.

In “sustainable travel” it’s a particularly big problem.

A few weeks ago, I was coaching a CEO who’d built something genuinely rare—an adventure company structured around Indigenous partnerships, locals’ homes, uncrowded destinations. Meaningful work. Her background was just as fascinating.

But her quotes? Indistinguishable from every other ethical travel brand.

When I pulled them up during our session, she was horrified, of course.

She was a busy executive and the system around her (PR, industry norms, what “sounds professional”) had convinced her that this generic language was what she was supposed to say. So she’d signed off on it quickly.

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The breakthrough came after I did an audit of her content and asked her during the strategy session: what aren't you saying about why you built this company the way you did? What feels too risky to name in a “professional” context? That's when she started talking about her background, the specific decisions she'd made in different countries, the gap she was trying to close. None of that was in her previous narrative.

Generic language feels safe but it makes you forgettable, especially in conscious tourism.

Now with AI flooding the space with infinite generic content, the cost of sounding like everyone else just went way up. The only thing left that signals authenticity is the detail no machine can invent because only you can tell that story.

I wrote more about how to start cutting through on my website, including three practices that work.

New: 7-Day Visibility Sprint

The client I mentioned earlier? Her real story — her background, her choices, her approach to ethical travel — became part of how she showed up. She won a leadership award for women in travel.

That work is part of what pushed me to create the 7-Day Visibility Sprint.
If you’re a tourism founder, entrepreneur, or executive doing meaningful work in travel, but the right people still aren’t seeing why it matters — take a look and apply.

It’s 1:1 work with me to sharpen how you describe your work and clarify the story behind it so you attract the right audience and opportunities. We do it in a week — with focus, honesty and your full participation.

And if someone came to mind while reading this, feel free to send them this newsletter or the link.

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I’m genuinely curious: What do you struggle with most when describing your work in travel? What part of your story are you hiding behind jargon? Feel free comment or reach out.

Knowing Jamaica and understanding tourism is much more layered than that, particularly after a hurricane category 5 that shut down a large number of all-inclusive resorts, I knew there was more beyond the official story.

So I went back in early to mid December, for 10 days.

I traveled from Negril to Montego Bay, Treasure Beach, Ocho Rios, and Kingston — and neighborhoods in between — talking to the people who actually make Jamaica’s tourism industry run: small hotel owners, a housekeeper, a cultural ambassador and rummer, a craft vendor in a cruise port, and an all-inclusive resort worker who asked that his identity be protected.

The result is the first film in a new series I’ve dreamed of creating for more than a year.

It’s called Tourism in Motion.

This isn’t a travel series about what to do, where to go or about arrival numbers or official statements. I also didn’t go to Jamaica to make a disaster film. I went because I was already watching a deeper shift in Caribbean tourism — toward luxury, foreign ownership, and gated experiences — and Hurricane Melissa became a stress test for that system.

I spent days moving between resort corridors and communities where tourism workers live. I heard optimism. I also heard fear. And in some cases, I heard things people could only say if their names were not attached.

This short film is about going beneath the surface and understanding how tourism impacts locals, and what recovery actually looks like when you’re inside it — and what Hurricane Melissa revealed about where Jamaica’s tourism industry is heading.

What I kept hearing wasn’t anti-tourism. Jamaicans actually want visitors. They like tourists. Tourism pays school fees. It keeps small businesses alive. It puts food on tables.

But it also increasingly runs through foreign-owned resorts, cruise pipelines, and gated systems that keep more money outside the country. Systems that benefit from outdated and colonial era coastal and labor laws.

In the film you’ll meet:

• A Negril hotel owner keeping his staff employed and providing rooms to those with most damage to their homes

• A cultural ambassador and drummer whose income disappeared overnight

• A craft vendor in Ocho Rios watching cruise tourism bypass local businesses

• A resort worker describing what happens behind the walls of Jamaica’s all-inclusive economy

Together, they paint a much more nuanced and real picture of what “tourism is back” really means and for whom. And what the future holds for Jamaica’s travel industry, a sector that brought in $4 billion in the most recent fiscal year, yet 60% if which “leaks out” or leaves the country and doesn’t stay in Jamaica, due to the multinationals that own the resorts and import goods.

Jamaica is where I started travel journalism — looking at travel through culture, but eventually growing beyond there and shifting towards investigative reporting, looking at tourism’s power, and who actually benefits. This film is part of a bigger push I’m making this year to keep reporting on tourism via video and not just writing, especially in places dealing with climate shocks and rapid development.

You can watch the full film here:

If you do, I’d love to know what stayed with you.

And if you want to support this kind of independent, on-the-ground reporting, there are ways to do that in the video description. I funded this trip and production myself, partly through YouTube ad revenue thanks to my growing audience of 12.5K subscribers who’ve just helped me reach 950,000 channel views in less than 2 years.

Thanks for being here,

Lily

In this latest episode, I sat down with prominent Caribbean economist Marla Dukharan who dropped so many truths that this should be required listening for anyone who writes about, works in, or vacations in the Caribbean.

We got into a wide range of hot topics impacting the region today:

• How rising crime and geopolitics are reshaping alliances in the region (and the massive backlash that Trinidad & Tobago got for aligning with the US)

• Jamaica’s massive climate recovery funding gap after Hurricane Melissa— and why Marla believes it’s time to ask for “climate compassion” versus “climate justice” demands the world’s worst polluters in the Global North.

• How tourism officials keep boasting about breaking arrival records—yet Caribbean countries aren’t any better off from a supposedly thriving tourism industry.

Marla explains why the current tourism model doesn’t add up — despite big claims about jobs and GDP contribution. This section is my favorite, because she really doesn’t sugarcoat at all! We have that in common.;)

She also says out loud what many won’t about the crime problem in the Caribbean. She reveals, for example, that Barbados currently has the fastest rising homicide rate —that’s unfortunate because it was once one of the safest countries in the Caribbean.

We also discussed the new free-movement agreement across Barbados, Belize, Dominica & St. Vincent and the Grenadines that became effective October 1 — and what’s really behind it.

Watch/listen to the full episode below.

Feel free to pass the link to someone who thinks “more tourist arrivals” equals more prosperity. ;-)

Till soon,
Lily

Why Now?

After decades in travel media and a lifetime spent across continents, I feel compelled to create an honest space to examine what tourism, global movement, identity, and belonging really mean in a world that’s losing its sense of connection, justice, and empathy. And how every travel and movement decision we make actually shapes the kind of world we want to live in.

Who am I?

I’m a third-culture kid — which means everything I do flows from a life spent easily navigating new spaces while never fully belonging to one.

I was born in Ethiopia, raised in Côte d’Ivoire, studied in the U.K. and U.S., and later lived across the greater Caribbean, where I began my journey as a culture-focused travel writer and photographer — and later, a travel journalist passionate about positive impact.

This space is where I share what all of that has taught me — about equity, inclusion, belonging, and how tourism and travel shapes people’s lives in ways we don’t always talk about.

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What to Expect

If you’re interested in what happens behind the scenes of sustainable tourism when you’re a journalist, or what it’s really like to build a life between worlds, you’ll feel at home here.

You can expect honest reflections on living abroad, lessons from covering travel for nearly two decades, and thoughts on culture, power, and what it means to move through the world with awareness.

I’ve learned to embrace my creative spirit – i.e., I’ll post when I have something valuable to say. Could be more than once a week, or once a month.

What Free Subscribers Get

• Reflections on travel, culture, and identity — from a journalist who’s lived between worlds.

• Dispatches and commentary from global destinations, with a focus on equity, heritage, and the human side of tourism.

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What Paid Subscribers Also Get

• Private posts: personal reflections and notes I don’t publish elsewhere.

• Behind-the-scenes looks at life as a sustainable tourism reporter and storyteller.

• Occasional reflections from my YouTube Tourism Lens episodes.

• The satisfaction of directly supporting truly independent travel journalism.

If that sounds like your kind of reading, I hope you’ll stick around.

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