The Responsible Tourism Institute - together with the Historical Villages of Portugal and the Portuguese Tourism Agency and with the support of NECSTouR - organised in Idanha-a-Velha (Portugal) on the 15-17 November the International Summit "Cultural Sustainable Destinations without Borders".

Innovation and Intelligence. Mr Patrick Torrent - President of NECSTouR, Catalonia Region - presented the vision of NECSTouR on how to Promote Innovation and Intelligence in a sharing and competitive way.

"People is the priority - Mr Torrent stated - and we need to find innovative solutions to involve them - services providers as tourism clients - in the Tourism decision-making, with an approach oriented towards the international cooperation and the multi-level governance."

The Barcelona Declaration "Better Places to Live, Better Places to Visit" has been presented as the NECSTouR innovative model to address the sustainability of the social and cultural impacts of tourism in Europe, by proposing a set of principles to be applied jointly in order to responsibly balance the uses of cultural heritage, the demands of the tourism industry and the needs of the local community.

Skills and Talents. Mr Torrent also underlined the fundamental role of Education the Tourism field to boost a change of mentality and develop new Skills and Talents more adequate with the current Tourism trends. "Among our Regions - he said - we share our experience and know-how to develop talent and competences to improve the profile of tourism workers"

The "Five S". Skills is indeed one of the "Five S" - together with Smart Destinations, Socio-Cultural Tourism, Safety and Statistics - that NECSTouR Regions will develop in the next three years to boost the competitivity of the Sustainable Tourism of the Europe of tomorrow.

Biosphere Destination Certification. The event has also been the occasion to deliver the Biosphere Destination Certification to Aldeias Históricas de Portugal by the Chairman of Responsible Tourism Institute, Dr. Tomas de Azcárate and the Minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister and of Economy of the Portuguese Government, Mr. Pedro Siza Vieira.