The IMPACT Magazine Volume 2
Walt's Epic Life
What more than 30 years in tourism has taught Walt Judas about the future of travel
By Izabela Jaroszynski
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Estimated read time: 5 minutes ↓
"Once you experience tourism, it's in your blood. It's hard to think of any other industry that gives you the same perspective, the same experience of meeting people from all over the world. It is an industry that creates memories, that does good."
After more than three decades in the industry and a few month's into his retirement from the Tourism Industry Association of British Columbia, Walt Judas still speaks about tourism with the enthusiasm of someone who has never lost sight of what drew him to it in the first place.
"Other sectors are jobs," he adds. "Tourism is kind of a lifestyle."
For Walt, that lifestyle was never part of the plan. He began his career in broadcast journalism and was living across the water from Vancouver's Expo '86 fairgrounds when he first encountered the transformative power of tourism. Newly married, he and his wife regularly visited the site, media pass in hand, immersing themselves in the cultures, ideas, and experiences that the world's fair brought to the city.
"That's where I got a strong flavour of what tourism is," he recalls.
He parlayed his broadcast experience into a communications role with BC Pavilion Corporation (PavCo). Much of the work touched different parts of the visitor economy, from meetings and conventions to events and sports.
"I kind of fell into tourism from there," he recalls.
Walt went on to work at Port Metro Vancouver before joining Tourism Vancouver, where he spent more than 15 years in senior leadership. In 2015, he took the helm of the Tourism Industry Associate of British Columbia, serving as CEO until his retirement at the end of 2025.
Along the way, Walt occupied a front-row seat to one of the most significant periods of change the tourism industry has ever experienced.
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Walt points to the "explosive growth of travel and tourism, particularly in the last 20 or 30 years," as among the biggest shifts he witnessed.
Technology transformed how travellers discover destinations. Traditional travel agents gave way to online booking platforms. Social media introduced travellers to places they might never have discovered otherwise. Entire destinations could be explored virtually before visitors ever arrived. At the same time, growing access to travel meant more people were exploring more places than ever before.
The shift created extraordinary opportunities for destinations around the world, but it also exposed new challenges that many communities continue to grapple with today.
"Many destinations weren't necessarily ready to welcome visitors," Walt says. "They didn't have the requisite infrastructure and amenities that perhaps catered to people's expectations."
For communities suddenly finding themselves on travellers' radar, success sometimes arrived faster than they could prepare for it.
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For Walt, those questions became particularly clear during a return visit to Venice.
Having first visited the city as a teenager, he returned years later and found a destination that felt fundamentally different. Many of the local vendors, such as glassblowing shops, had disappeared, replaced with more generic souvenirs, and residencies had been replaced with short-term rentals.
While the famous canals, landmarks, and squares remain, that magic of Venice, what Venice is all about, had eroded.
"There's a fine line there, because you want people to be able to earn a living, and Venice is geared around tourism, but there's a tipping point where it starts to commoditize tourism for the sake of trying to make some money versus retaining some charm about it and caring about sustainability in multiple forms," Walt says.
"It looked to me like it was more about taking advantage of the visitors there and trying to sell them something, versus a true visitor experience of seeing a destination for its original charm."
The experience left a lasting impression, illustrating a challenge facing destinations around the world. For much of tourism's history, success was measured through growth: more visitors, more room nights, more economic activity.
But Walt believes the conversation is changing.
"You don't want to see tourism as a commodity," he says. "I'd much rather have tourism done in a very thoughtful, measured, sustainable way."
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Sustainability, in his view, is about more than environmental stewardship. It also encompasses protecting the qualities that make a place worth visiting in the first place.
One phrase captures that philosophy particularly well: "A good place to visit is a good place to live, and vice versa," Walt says.
As destinations around the world grapple with increasing visitation, resident concerns, housing pressures, and changing traveller expectations, tourism leaders are being asked to think differently about what success looks like.
Walt says it all starts with planning.
"I'm a big proponent of tourism master plans," he says.
Rather than reacting to growth after it arrives, he believes communities should determine what role tourism should play in their future and bring residents, businesses, Indigenous communities, government, and tourism operators into the conversation from the outset.
"If you look to the future and see tourism as a real opportunity for change, then it's best to do some planning around that."
It is advice shaped by a career spent watching destinations evolve and advocating for change.
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In January 2026, at the 9th annual IMPACT Summit in Victoria, Walt was recognized with an IMPACT Award for his exemplary leadership rooted in integrity and his long-standing dedication to building a sustainable tourism sector.
While the accolades are always welcome, the real impact for Walt — and the reason he remains forever rooted in the tourism lifestyle, as he calls it — is the people he's connected with all over the world.
"There's something special about being in tourism that those relationships endure," he says. "There's a strong sense of pride of place, but also a recognition of how important those relationships are and how different we are, but yet so much alike."
Walt says his wife has her own description for the life tourism gave him.
"She says to me all the time, 'you've had an epic career,'" he says with a laugh. "And she jokingly calls it 'Walt's Epic Life' because the experiences I've had in tourism, 99.9 percent of people will never have those same experiences. Partly because of the roles I occupied, the type of work I was doing, and the people I interacted with."
Over more than three decades, Walt witnessed tourism's remarkable growth and helped shape conversations about where it should go next. Yet the lesson that runs through his career is a simple one: destinations are more than products, visitors are more than numbers, and tourism is ultimately about connection with people.
That's what made the life epic.
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