After three years of fruitful cooperation, including the implementation of 18 touristic packages in ten pilot areas of the ADRION Region (Thessaloniki, Preveza and Igoumenitsa in Greece, Ravenna and Grado-Aquileia in Italy, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Zadar in Croatia, Tivat in Montenegro, Berat in Albania, and Belgrade in Serbia), the development of one common mobile app to promote sustainable tourism, the co-creation of a transnational strategy on “sustainable tourism hand in hand with mobility planning”, the building of a large cooperation network and the production of high quality recommendations on the future of tourism in the area and the conduction of four capacity building webinars, the partners of the SUSTOURISMO project, funded under the Interreg ADRION Programme 2014-2020, gathered for their final conference on 7 December 2022 at the Trieste Convention Centre.
The discussions, during this hybrid event (online and in presence), focused on “Digital Solutions and eco-friendly models for lower carbon and sustainable tourism solutions in the Adrion Region” and on best practices and strategies to face future challenges in the tourism sector. The event was an opportunity to exchange insightful knowledge with stakeholders outside the project consortium.
The first panel of the Conference was dedicated to Mobility planning and Sustainable Tourism, where Mr. Tito Stefanelli, TRT Trasporti e Territorio, showed how the COVID-19 triggered some positive changes in transport and mobility patterns, followed by Mr. Andrea Stocchetti from the University of Ca ’Foscari of Venice who demonstrated the positive impact that soft measures can have on tourism and mobility planning and management, and Mr. Isidoro De Bortoli from EURAC Research who explained the Triple Helix Cooperation approach applied to the tourism sector.
The second panel focused on Digital solutions at the service of sustainable tourism. In particular, SUSTOURISMO Lead Partner team member, Ms. Glykeria Myrovali, from the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas/Hellenic Institute of Transport (CERTH/HIT), presented how digitalization can help to respond to the changes in the traveller behaviour and face the challenges in the tourism sector post-COVID pandemic. Ms. Natasa Miric, from the Dubrovnik Development Agency (DURA) gave concrete examples of the best practices and strategies that allowed to overcome over-tourism in Dubrovnik since 2017, including the implementation of the smart city strategy and the development of mobile apps such as the ‘Dubrovnik eye’ to monitor the flows and the Dubrovnik card app to concentrate the touristic offers in one app. Finally, the panel discussion closed with the presentation and evaluation of the SUSTOURISMO app by Ms. Kornilia-Maria Kotoula from the LP team.
During the last session of the Conference, the consortium presented the touristic packages (combined mobility and other touristic services) developed and tested in each pilot area of the project and discussed the lessons learnt and next steps.
During this three-year long partnership, SUSTOURISMO has shown that cooperation cross-sectors and cross-borders is crucial to support sustainable tourism. This has been captured in a series of Memorandum of Understandings that have been signed among stakeholders in each partner country of the consortium.
This announcement has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The content of the announcement is the sole responsibility of SUSTOURISMO PP4 (CEI-ES) and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union and/or ADRION programme authorities.
