The European Commission Directorate General for Regional and Urban policy (DG REGIO) launched a study to assess the impact of COVID-19 on tourism regions and propose policy recommendations on how to make tourism regions more resilient in the next years. A consortium led by Spatial Foresight, in cooperation with NECSTouR and t33 and AnySolution is conducting this study.

The tourist sector is vital to the economy in many European regions and it one of the sectors mostly heavily affected by COVID-19, both in the short-term and in the medium to long-term. This study assess how various types of tourist regions are affected by COVID-19 and what future developments in the tourism sector might bring for them. The study combines the territorial diversity and economic importance of the tourism sector (and its prospective) with the territorial diverse impacts of COVID19 and policy responses to the pandemic and recovery measures.

There is also a time dimension to it, as the impacts of their territoriality differ between what we have seen during spring 2020 (lockdown phase), summer/winter 2020 (holiday season with travel restrictions) and what expect to see in the short-term (2021/2) and medium term (post 2022).

• Supporting the identification of relevant documents and data sets on types of tourist regions, tourist trends, COVID-19 impacts on the tourism sector and tourist regions, policy measures to mitigate crises (e.g. COVID-19) in the tourism sector
• Assisting with the development and dissemination of an online survey
• Supporting the identification of policy initiatives and the selection of possible case studies
• Participation in digital focus groups related to the case studies
• Contribution to the development of policy recommendations and conclusions related to EU Cohesion Policy