Place First Voices: Hartmut Rosa

In the lead-up to the official launch of our new community, GENERATION PLACE, in Turin, Italy, we want to highlight people whose work puts the flourishing of a place first. This series opens up to anyone who embodies the PLACE FIRST principle already - musicians, painters, visual artists, writers, philosophers, placemakers, journalists, consultants, mayors, community workers, people in healthcare, and those reflecting on placemaking, placemarketing, and tourism. If someone comes to mind whom we may not yet have considered, feel free to send us a personal message. The more inspiration we gather, the stronger the community becomes.

JOIN US AT GENERATION PLACE, FEBRUARY 24–25, 2027, IN TORINO, ITALY, AND MEET SOME OF THE PLACE FIRST VOICES OF OUR GENERATION. LEARN MORE HERE.

Place First Voices Featuring Antje Voss - The Power of Resonance: from philosophy to practice

Tourism is ultimately about creating value - for people, places and communities. Dr. Antje Voss, CEO of the Luxembourg Tourism Office, will show how sociologist Hartmut Rosa's philosophy of resonance is reflected in Luxembourg's destination strategy, with its emphasis on quality of place, wellbeing, sustainability and meaningful visitor experiences.

A Thought: After 90 Years of Paid Holidays, Where Do We Go From Here?

In the summer of 2026, Belgium celebrated 90 years of paid holidays. That milestone did not come about on its own. Organisations such as Pasar, which began as Vakantiegenoegens, worked from the very beginning to make sure that holidays would not remain a luxury for the few, but become a right for the many. For decades, they helped turn what was written in law into something real: the time, the means and a place to go. They filled that right with concrete ways to set out, to travel together and to make the world a little bigger.

Those first trips to the mountains or the sea left a deep mark on our grandparents and parents. You can still see it in the photographs and early home movies that keep resurfacing: a new world opening up, a different sky, a different horizon. A holiday felt exceptional, something that gave colour to a whole life.

Today we know quite well what a holiday can do for us. Stress drops, the body recovers, the mind is refreshed. We sleep better and feel lighter. And because we step into unfamiliar situations, our self-confidence often grows: we discover we can handle more than we thought. We strengthen ourselves and meet new people.

From right to rat race

Yet one question is hard to ignore: what has the rise of mass tourism since the 1980s done to this hard-won achievement? We have more holiday days, more choice and more possibilities than ever. We fly to the sun for a weekend, take several trips a year, and see more destinations in one lifetime than our grandparents did in theirs. Do we still feel that positive power of travel, or have we mostly shifted into a higher gear?

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa describes our era as a society of acceleration: doing ever more in ever less time. That logic has crept into our holidays too. What was meant as a counterweight to work and exhaustion has become, for many, a project of seeing and experiencing as much as possible. We plan our free time the way we plan our working days. Time meant to release us from the rush quickly becomes an extension of the same rat race: booking ahead, reserving, hours spent in airports or in traffic.

Travel as resonance

Rosa also offers a way out. He speaks of resonance: moments in which we truly connect with the world, with a landscape, a city, ourselves or another person, and in which something inside us shifts. A holiday should be a time to genuinely pause, to reflect on life, or simply to recharge by not having to think at all. Such moments cannot be forced through checklists and reservations. They require time, attention and openness, exactly what comes under pressure when a holiday becomes mainly a consumer product we buy and display.

After 90 years of paid holidays, we have arrived at a crossroads. Can we, and do we want to, keep going this way? We have grown used to always being on the move, to the next trip, the next destination. But do we ever truly arrive? 

Do all those journeys leave a trace in who we are, in how we look at our work, our relationships and our place in the world?

Taking the legacy seriously

If we take the legacy of the right to a holiday seriously, it is no longer only about "getting away for a while", but about what that time does to us and who we become by travelling. Do we dare to see holidays once again as a space for resonance and change: slowness, attention, experiences that cannot be measured but linger and gently give direction to our lives? And do we dare, at the same time, to take responsibility for the places and people who receive us, so that our recovery does not come at the expense of their wellbeing?

Perhaps that is the task after 90 years of paid holidays. Not counting how many trips we have made, but asking to what extent they have taught us to see differently: ourselves, others and the world we share. In a time of polarisation, it matters more than ever to truly meet other people and cultures, and to experience again that people everywhere are people, whatever political leaders say or do. The challenge for the years ahead is to reinvent the holiday as time that opens us up rather than closes us off, that takes down walls rather than builds them. Travel as it was once intended: moments that do not merely interrupt work, but leave a positive impact and energy that lasts longer than a week, perhaps a year, or even a lifetime.

What this reflection captures is the core idea of Place First: a place is not a backdrop to be consumed, but a living environment shaped by the people who inhabit it, and by how we, as visitors, choose to show up there.

It reminds us that the questions facing tourism reach far beyond the industry itself. They touch on rest and recovery, on belonging, on what we owe the places and communities that host us, and on what kind of people we become by travelling. Ninety years after a hard-won social right, the future of the holiday, and of the places we visit, is a shared responsibility, held collectively and never by one sector alone.

Antje Voss will elaborate on resonance at GENERATION PLACE, February 24–25, 2027, in Torino. Join us HERE.

MORE PLACE FIRST FEATURES TO COME...