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When choosing a location for hosting Workations, one of the key considerations is integrating the Workation offer with the local community. Locals need to be not just prepared but also eager to welcome visitors not only into their businesses but also their local community and culture. To maintain a positive relationship in the long term, Workation participants need to add value to the community, not only by spending with local businesses but also showing appreciation for the local culture and being willing to share their knowledge and expertise with the community.
How can Workation destinations ensure great integration between locals and visitors, and what are the benefits to both the local community and Workation participants?
Get Local Buy-In for a Workation Destination
When choosing where to establish a Workation destination, it is important to get buy-in from the local community from the planning phase to ensure support rather than opposition to the initiative.
This involves asking for input and feedback on ideas so you can establish the limits of what is reasonable and discover opportunities that you might not know about.
It is also to highlight economic benefits for the local community and follow through on them by:
- hiring locally for key positions
- sourcing resources from local providers
- recommending local businesses and working them into the Workation offer
- investing in infrastructure that benefits visitors and the local community (such as high-speed internet capability)
- making sure that the Workation business is transparent about making full tax contributions
Highlighting opportunities that the Workation will bring to the local community, such as knowledge exchange and cultural events, and emphasising your commitment not to negatively impact the local environment or community will all help locals welcome your Workation offer.
Hubs Travel has successfully won the support of local communities in Lenk, Bovec, and Budapest. A number of other Workation communities have done the same, including Bansko in Bulgaria with Bansko Nomad Fest, which is bringing digital nomads and remote workers to rural parts of Spain, and the digital nomad village at Madeira in Portugal.
Ensuring Community Integration
In addition to working with the community from the start, it is important to build engagement between the community and visitors into the Workation experience on every level. Remember that Workation visitors tend to stay significantly longer than other visitors, so there is a greater opportunity for sustained and genuine contact between visitors and the hosts.
The following types of considerations can help foster community integration.
Establish Shared Spaces
It is important to create and establish shared spaces where visitors and the community can meet. This means not locking up visitors in private workation spaces but hosting some activities in spaces that are open and welcoming for both visitors and locals, such as local coffee shops and community spaces.
Promote Local Businesses
Activities organized for Workation participants should be organized in partnership with local businesses, whether that be networking dinners at local restaurants, tours with local guides, or hiring equipment from local stores.
Language and Cultural Exchange Programs
Often, the biggest barrier to engagement between visitors and locals can be language. Setting up language classes that can support locals learn widely spoken languages such as English can help the community in the long-term. On the other side, providing classes on the local language to visitors can help them feel more like part of the community and can be an opportunity for cultural exchange as locals share their language by talking about local customs and culture.
Volunteer Opportunities
If the local community has projects that could use support, from harvesting seasonal produce to creating tourism content for social media, volunteering opportunities can be a great way for visitors to give back to the community and have one-on-one interaction with locals working on the same projects.
Benefits of Visitor & Local Integration
While it may seem like a lot of territory to cover to properly integrate a Workation offer with the local community, the benefits to both the Workation participants and the local community enrich the offer for people on both sides of the exchange.
Mutual Enrichment
Visitors often come into the local community hoping to learn about a local culture and experience a new way of life. Being able to experience part of local day-to-day life allows them to put their own lives in perspective and think about fundamental changes they might want to make.
Locals can gain exposure to diverse cultures and new ideas, which may not be accessible to individuals who rarely have the opportunity to travel. Encountering people from other parts of the world face-to-face and open minds and raise aspirations and expectations.
Skills Exchange
Workations tend to bring together experienced professionals from a variety of backgrounds. This can be a unique opportunity for skills sharing between Workation participants and between Workation participants and locals.
Workation participants can often share their knowledge, hosting workshops on specific skills or helping locals develop their online and social media presence. Locals can teach Workation participants about local traditions, resources, cooking methods, arts, and more.
Building Networks
Often, finding new opportunities is less about “what you know” and more about “who you know,” and the networking opportunities offered by Workations are invaluable. Again, this is both between participants and between visiting participants and locals.
Workation participants can find new partners for local business ventures, and locals can find connections to international businesses and networks for new travel and work opportunities.
Boost Well-Being
Social interaction and learning new things have both been shown to be good for our mental health and well-being. These kinds of interactions can be baked into good Workation offers for both participants and locals. Studies tracking the long-term impact of these in Workation environments will be very welcome.
Long-Term Community Impact
While these are all excellent short-term benefits, allowing these to accumulate over the long term can have major benefits for the community, boosting tourism, injecting investment into the local economy, changing the international reputation of the region, and changing local aspirations and opportunities.
Making Workations Work Locally
Ideally, when a destination opens itself up to host regular Workations, they can be confident that they are offering something that adds value both for participants and the local community. Integral to this is creating genuine interaction and exchange between visitors and locals. While figuring out how to do this is not rocket science, it requires active planning from the inception of the Workation offer.
