The “Sustainable EU Tourism – Shaping the Tourism of Tomorrow” project provides support to EU tourism destinations as they navigate towards greater sustainability and resilience, in line with the Transition Pathway for Tourism.
Throughout the project's duration (December 2023 to December 2025), emphasis will be placed on ensuring the economic, social, and cultural well-being of local communities, alongside the preservation of their natural environments.
Specifically, the project will
- identify key challenges and best practices related to sustainable and resilient tourism
- establish a peer-to-peer twinning mechanism for tourism destinations facing similar challenges. This mechanism will facilitate the sharing of experiences, mutual learning and collaboration towards common objectives
- in addition to this project, DMOs will be informed of other European Commission instruments that support peer learning activities in public administrations. These include study visits, expert missions, and workshops – such as the TAIEX-EIR Peer-2-Peer tool (environmental technical assistance) or REGIO Peer2Peer + (regional technical assistance)
- carry out communication campaigns targeting DMOs and tourists
On 18 April 2024, a 1-hour webinar was organised to present the project’s activities to interested stakeholders, in particular destinations. All materials are available below
Recent progress
The survey on EU tourism destinations closed on 31 May 2024.
It collected 224 replies from destinations across all 27 EU Member States. The countries with the highest share of replies were Croatia, Austria and Italy. Based on a preliminary analysis, the most common negative impacts of tourism are
- the increased cost of housing and living
- environmental degradation and congestion
- economic distress during the low season
- precarious and irregular work
On the other hand, the most common positive impacts are an improved local economy, increased employment opportunities, as well as a bigger offer of entertainment and cultural events.
In terms of factors that positively influence a destination’s resilience, the strongest are mostly
- the level of conservation of natural features
- the effectiveness of destination management
- the quality of utilities/facilities
66% of destinations are already implementing measures to improve their tourism sustainability and resilience mainly addressing environmental matters (128 initiatives), as well as sociocultural (118 initiatives) and economic aspects (95 initiatives).
The project will analyse these survey results in detail, and together with a literature review, draw up replicable best practices.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact Alberto Venditti at: alberto [dot] venditti
intelleraconsulting [dot] com (alberto[dot]venditti[at]intelleraconsulting[dot]com)