TExTOUR: a journey across sustainable cultural tourism in Europe and beyond

TExTOUR is a project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020, from January 2021 to September 2024. It sees the participation of 18 partners, coordinated by Fundación Santa María la Real, from 13 countries, covering all the sections of the social innovation helix (knowledge, business, society, government, and entrepreneurs).

Our main goal, as TExTOUR project, was to co-design innovative and sustainable cultural tourism strategies to improve deprived and remote areas in Europe and beyond. All while preserving traditions, the environment, and local communities' lifestyles.

To develop, test and implement our strategies, we chose eight pilot sites located in remote areas: Crespi D'Adda (Italy), Narva (Estonia), Umgebindeland (Germany), Via Regia (Ukraine), Trebinje (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Tarnowskie Gory (Poland), Vale do Côa—Siega Verde (Portugal and Spain), and Anfeh—Fikardou (Lebanon and Cyprus).

Thanks to our pilots' diversity, we developed a variety of cultural tourism scenarios in coastal, inland, rural, and urban areas. Such variety leads to different socio-economic conditions. We identified difficulties and opportunities for each region, classified heritage, and associated tourism, and evaluated the best strategies for socio-economic development and the inclusion of local communities.

The workshops held in the pilot sites and the cultural tourism development strategies and actions co-developed with the local communities led to our 7-step methodology for cultural tourism development.

As part of the project's heritage, we created an online platform for the pilot and other tourist sites to upload information on cultural heritage, trails, activities, hotels, and more. At the same time, the data collected through the platform will support policy and decision-making for business development in remote areas.

A series of 24 cultural tourism sustainable actions were designed and implemented by our pilot sites and will serve as examples for future activities.

Even though our project reached its end, our achievements will not be lost. There are already five scalable territories replicating our methodology, and all our informative material, guidelines, best practices, webinars, and videos will remain on our website, accessible to everybody.

Our journey was full of adventures and satisfaction, and we hope to inspire more people to find their path towards sustainable cultural tourism development in Europe and Beyond.

Contacts:

Project coordinator:

Daniel Basulto- Fundación Santa María la Real del Patrimonio Histórico dbasulto@santamarialareal.org

Communication Manager:

Nicola Vuolo ICONS- nicola.vuolo@icons.it

Silvia Prazzoli ICONS- silvia.prazzoli@icons.it

Project website: https://textour-project.eu/

Twitter: @tex_tour

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/textour-project/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/textour.project

YouTube: @TExTOUR_project

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