By Kaelan Young

Viristar’s Director, Jeff Baierlein, presented a session on Adventure Tourism Safety Regulations – A Global Perspective at ITB Berlin 2025. This session offered guidance on the development of adventure tourism safety regulations, with a focus on supporting economic development and sustainable business growth.

The presentation began with a story about Emily Jordan, a 21-year-old law graduate from the UK who traveled to New Zealand in 2008 for an adventure. Tragically, she drowned during a river-boarding trip on the Kawarau River. 

This tragic incident led to the New Zealand government passing adventure safety regulations in an effort to prevent such accidents in the future.

Jeff brought together tourism officials, regulators, and adventure tourism operators from across the globe to discuss strategies for creating and implementing effective safety regulations. 

He shared examples of where adventure safety regulations are in place or under consideration, including the UK, UAE, Oman, Finland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Yukon (Canada), Maharashtra & Kerala (India), Georgia, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa, highlighting the growing global recognition of the value of adventure tourism safety regulations.

Why Now?

Jeff emphasized that the call for adventure tourism safety regulations is driven by several key factors:

• Increasing expectations for safety and quality: as adventure tourism grows in popularity, travelers expect higher standards of safety and quality during their experiences.
• The adventure tourism industry is professionalizing: the industry is maturing, with more operators seeking professional standards and practices to meet the growing demand.
• Increasing recognition of sustainable development and economic benefits: adventure tourism is being increasingly seen as a driver of sustainable development, with positive economic impacts for local communities and the global economy.

In addition, there are several potential benefits of adventure tourism regulations, like providing helpful guidance to operators, helping ensure operators meet minimum safety standards, and enhancing the sector’s reputation and sustainability.

Jeff noted that government regulation can be more effective than voluntary industry self-regulation or individual operator self-regulation. Compulsory regulations, research suggests, have a higher compliance rate than voluntary self-regulation schemes, which can lead to better safety outcomes.

​​Key Considerations for Implementing Regulations

The essential components of effective adventure tourism regulation include authorizing law, safety regulations, industry standards with third-party audits, Approved Codes of Practice, and robust public-private collaboration.

Factors to be be considered when implementing adventure tourism safety regulations, Jeff stated, include:

1. National versus Regional Regulation: A unified, national regulatory approach is generally more effective than a fragmented regional system. Fragmented regulations can lead to operational challenges for operators whose activities cross regional boundaries.
2. Transition Period for Operators: Regulations should provide operators with a reasonable transition period (for example, one to five years, depending on the circumstances) to adapt their practices to meet new standards. This flexibility can help ensure that businesses are able to implement changes without undue burden.
3. Financial Support for Compliance: Financial and operational support from government is important to helping the private sector develop training schemes, training centers, Good Practice Guides, and other assets so that it is reasonably practicable for operators to meet the new requirements.
4. Tailored Regulatory Models: While various regulatory models exist, each region should select the system that best matches its unique characteristics and needs. 
5. Support for Operators: Operators will benefit from financial, logistical and other support in developing procedures, instituting certified training schemes, and completing training of staff to be able to meet the new requirements. Providing government funding for these investments is an important factor in preparing the adventure sector to meet the safety requirements.

Recommendations

Jeff Baierlein wrapped up the session with recommendations for governments, industry stakeholders, and regulators as they move toward creating effective adventure tourism safety regulations.

• Recognize the benefits of well-developed, well-enforced adventure tourism safety regulations.
• Invest in public-private collaboration to develop and implement regulations and supporting structures (training, good practice guides, etc.).
• Consider the political climate before embarking on regulation development–not every jurisdiction is ready to take this on, but some are well-prepared to do so.
• Learn from the experiences of countries that have already implemented adventure tourism safety regulations, adopting models and approaches that have been successful.

Additional Resources

Specific adventure safety legislation, regulation, ACOPs, GPGs, related articles, and the slide presentation can be found here.

The full presentation can be viewed below.