As we continue to implement our key work programme missions towards achieving a more sustainable tourism of tomorrow, these also align with the European Commission's Tourism Transition Pathway and their Call for Commitments to the Pathway.

In this context, on 13th September NECSTouR Director Cristina Núñez intervened in DG GROW Tourism Unit's stakeholder event, where she was invited to present how our network is delivering the Tourism Transition Pathway. The event aimed to provide updates on Pathway related developments and received pledges, with the objective of increasing and supporting engagement in its co-implementation with concrete actions.

NECSTouR reply to the call for commitments to co-implement the Pathway

The Director explained why, as a network whose core business is to support the reshaping of tourism governance based on the 2030 Agenda’s values, we replied to the call for commitments. She laid out three key reasons; firstly, the recent and ongoing crises that tourism is facing, which has highlighted the need to tackle the issues with strategies that are co-created with communities and for the communities. They must be inclusive and wholistic, with long term goals and flexible mechanisms, using private-public cooperation to enable us to respond in a coordinated way to crisis. Secondly, that sustainability is the way forward if we want our destinations to recover competitiveness. Thirdly, because we believe in European cooperation to solve the issues; in this way we continue making progress with our agendas and our strategies, learning from each other and enabling each other to overcome the barriers through shared knowledge and good practices and cooperation in projects.

Why and how we align and complement the Pathway

The Director recounted why NECSTouR aligns with the Pathway, reminding us of the need, as a sector that accounts for at least 5% of carbon emissions, to recognise our impact. We know the industry has been called to reduce our emissions by half by 2030 and to be carbon neutral in 2050, and our work at NECSTouR aligns with this. Additionally, we are still recovering from an unprecedented crisis and facing additional geo-political challenges such as, inflation, labour shortage, and connectivity as well as an energy crisis.

Presenting NECSTouR's response to these challenges, the Director detailed how the network has taken this moment as an opportunity, a chance to invest in tourism quality, connecting our agenda with that of the Agenda 2030, aligning our work programme and projects with themes that are also referenced in the 12 topics of the Tourism Transition Pathway. Our Strategic Actions already showed the impact we want to make and how we will get there, so by including the proposals, actions, and targets of the Pathway as part of the learnings, we ensure that our mission is aligned and complements the Pathway.

NECSTouR Strategic Actions that complement the Tourism Transition Pathway:

• Tourism of Tomorrow Lab: Improving tourism measurability and intelligence, Data-driven policies and services, Digitalisation.
• Better Places to Live, Better Places to Visit: Collaborative governance of tourism destinations, Tourism services for visitors and residents alike.
• NECSTouR Climate Action Plan: Comprehensive tourism strategies, Decarbonisation, measurement, regeneration and green transition: Sustainable mobility, circularity.
• Sustainable Tourism Community MED: Visibility of funding opportunities for tourism actors, Better tourism governance in the MED region, Capitalisation of sustainable tourism development

In addition to the Director's intervention, NECSTouR members also participated in the sessions for Q&As and comments from stakeholders, relaying their own experiences of the Pathway and making relevant inquiries.

View the full NECSTouR Powerpoint Presentation here.

A successful event and upcoming opportunities

The event was the first open stakeholders event on co-implementing the Transition pathway for tourism and altogether there were around 300 participants online and on-site.

All the presentations from the event are available online: EU Tourism transition pathway stakeholder meeting (europa.eu)

The next occasion for you to see another set of great pledge examples and committed stakeholders takes place in the EU week of regions and cities. In this context,  GD GROW is organising an online session Sustainable EU tourism - transforming together on 11 October 2022 at 14:30-16:00. There are several stakeholders in the session who will share their published and upcoming pledges with you.

Please remember that the Transition Pathway for tourism is available in 22 languages and the Call for commitments for its implementation is open for all stakeholders. You can find information of 186 pledges and a list of already committed organisations at Commitments and pledges for the transition of EU tourism (europa.eu).