Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility towards Smart Destinations
11-01-2021
Integration of regional/local policies for Sustainable Mobility, Accessibility & low-carbon Responsible Travel, with policies for efficient sustainable tourism towards a low-carbon economy, requires particular attention in the EU. This is a common challenge that public regional/local and transport authorities increasingly face, particularly at busy destinations with high tourism travel flows (inc. in South Europe, coastal, maritime & insular, mass tourism destinations). Immediate action is needed through interregional cooperation to capitalise best practices, improve policy instruments & prepare action plans with implementation monitoring & evaluation. The DESTI-SMART project, addresses the above towards 'Smart Destinations', for sustainable & responsible tourism development in Europe, with low-carbon, multimodal sustainable mobility & accessibility. The overall objective is to improve the transport and tourism policies of EU destinations, by integrating strategies for sustainable mobility, accessibility and responsible travel with efficient & sustainable tourism development, for transition to a low-carbon economy, through efficiency, resilience, multimodality, novel low-carbon transport systems, cycling & walking, with implementation innovations, policy learning and capacity building. The following pressing issues are addressed: - Investments in low-carbon transport systems for mode shift to sustainable tourism mobility, incl. Electro-Mobility - Intermodality facilities for visitors, including ICT, Mobile Aps & MaaS - Accessible tourism for all - Cycling & Walking facilities & promotion for visitors. Main outputs: - policy learning & capacity building for public authorities & their stakeholders - improved policy instruments & action plans in 9 destinations, with close involvement of stakeholders - advances in EU2020 objectives - communication & dissemination learning materials. Smart Mobility towards Smart Destinations & Tourism
Cultural and Creative Tourism based on Cultural and Creative Industries for SME Competitiveness
07-01-2021
The potential of Cultural & Creative Industries (CCIs) in developing new Cultural & Creative Tourism (CCT) products and services for Growth & Jobs, is being advanced by the Cult-CreaTE project with policy change in 8 EU regions. Common challenges are: - The contribution of CCIs to CCT has not been given the attention it deserves to date. Cultural tourism needs CCIs to partially reinvent itself and attract the new generations. CCIs are also an indispensable source of innovation for other types of sustainable tourism, typically ‘Creative Tourism’. - Creative Tourism is considered a new generation of cultural tourism by involving the tourists themselves and the locals in the creation of the tourist products (co-creation). - CCIs are in a strategic position to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in all EU regions and cities, and thus contribute fully to the Europe 2020 Strategy and beyond, through their deployment for CCT. - While some EU regions have been very good at tapping into this extraordinary potential as a way to promote socio-economic development, it however, appears that many others have not been making most of this potential. - Synergies between sustainable tourism and CCIs can enhance the visibility and promotion of CCT. These synergies can contribute to the promotion of sustainable tourism destinations, an attraction of new investment and creation of new employment opportunities, particularly for youth and in lagging regions. The overall objective is to redeploy CCIs for the development and promotion of CCT strategies, with sustainability, innovations, capitalisation, policy learning, policy implementation and capacity building. Main outputs are action plans, with implementation and monitoring of improved policy instruments in 8 EU destination regions, communication and dissemination tools for policy learning and capacity building, contribution to EU policies and SDGs. The beneficiaries are public authorities and their stakeholders.