Celes Davar

Celes Davar is an experiential tourism operator and owner of Earth Rhythms (since its inception in 1995), located in the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq in western Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Valley. He is a storytelling guide, community workshop facilitator, champion of regenerative tourism, a community catalyst, and an experiential tourism coach. His background includes facilitation methods, Appreciative Inquiry, Art of Hosting, climate change science and training, and enabling community collaboration throughout Canada in regenerative and experiential tourism. His academic background is from the University of New Brunswick in environmental and biological studies (BSc), and he previously worked with Parks Canada for 21 years in various planning and management roles within the Interpretation and Visitor Services sections in Halifax and Riding Mountain National Park. Celes and his wife (a potter) steward a David Suzuki supported National Healing Forest (one of five in Nova Scotia), which protects a small Wabanaki (Acadian) forest and its associated biodiversity and watershed, as well as sequestering carbon within the 72-acre old forest.

Celes is known for his ability to make understandable and inspiring presentations that help others to grasp changing economic frameworks and rethinking of tourism as an economic driver within destinations where climate change, economic uncertainty, rural realities, and entrepreneurship intersect. His understanding of the importance of tourism nested within the capacities of regional ecology and municipal constraints has been helpful to initiate stronger collaboration and discussions involving reThinking tourism from the community grassroots level to influence destination management strategies. His efforts have resulted in innovations in how experience development and subsequent marketing tactics have evolved across the country. He is the author of two companion guidebooks - Crafting Legendary Visitor Experiences, and Coaching Transformational Visitor Experiences - which form the curriculum for many experiential tourism workshops across Canada. Most recently, Celes has been helping to develop an innovative grassroots collaboration between community partners in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia to create a suite of new experiences that celebrate the stories and people who produce food, make art, and protect nature.

Celes’s vision is for a transformed tourism sector which meets the aspirations and realities of people in tourism guided by their communities as a first priority, aligned with the needs of the planet, in which the relationship between community hosts and guests is cultivated as a deep and long-lasting relationship. He guides conversations and facilitates learning in ways that help to integrate these concepts so that tourism can generate new revenues for multiple collaborative businesses, attract different visitors who want to travel more sustainably and more actively support the places they visit.