Meet Muna Haddad, founding CEO of Baraka Destinations, as she discusses community-led tourism and why her Champions of Change Award marks a turning point for the hospitality sector.
What sets your work apart?
Our work is defined by intention, carefully shaping stories, voices and experiences with depth, patience and genuine responsibility. Today, although enthusiasm for authentic experiences is encouraging, there is a risk authenticity becomes rushed, packaged and stripped of meaningful cultural depth. Importantly, authenticity cannot be manufactured, because our experiences grow from real people, lived histories, food traditions and community voices. Therefore, this approach requires time, trust and restraint, deliberately resisting shortcuts even when fast-moving tourism markets demand rapid results. Notably, we chose to slow down, designing fewer experiences well, prioritizing relationships over scalability and ensuring ethical cultural accountability always. Ultimately, this intentionality ensures our work feels honest to guests while remaining deeply respectful and credible to host communities.
Why is community-led travel essential?
Today, many destinations show tension between residents, tourists and authorities, revealing tourism models that distribute benefits unfairly. Protests in popular destinations signal systemic imbalance between tourism profits and the social and environmental costs borne locally. When resources are strained, and rising living costs and cultural erosion outweigh benefits, tourism models become fundamentally unsustainable. Therefore, community-led travel corrects this imbalance by positioning residents as participants, storytellers and direct economic beneficiaries. Moreover, community involvement must be central to destination design, management, storytelling and economics, not an afterthought. Thus, proving tourism can succeed commercially while remaining inclusive, respectful and socially grounded is now an industry imperative.
How do you ensure lasting economic impact?
We operate as a business, not a charity, because sustainable impact requires viable revenue models, ownership and accountability. From the beginning, we intentionally designed experiences where locals are hosts, producers, guides, cooks and storytellers earning income. As a result, economic impact becomes structural, recurring and independent from grants, goodwill or temporary philanthropic support. Also, we carefully track income, jobs, repeat engagement and partnerships while thoughtfully deciding how impact is communicated externally. Moreover, we want guests to choose Baraka for quality experiences, not out of obligation to support communities. Thus, when experiences stand on merit, economic and social benefits follow naturally, ensuring long-term sustainability and dignity.
What should investors understand about responsible growth?
Today, local inclusion can no longer be cosmetic, because travelers easily recognize shallow narratives versus deeply rooted cultural engagement. Encouragingly, investors increasingly seek early-stage integration of community, culture and storytelling within ambitious destination developments. Therefore, responsible growth has shifted from optional branding exercises to operational necessity shaping long-term destination success. However, the challenge remains scaling values, not dilution, beyond boutique experiences into mass tourism responsibly. The future requires scaling depth, ethics and inclusion alongside infrastructure and that is where the industry must evolve.
