Hello, Hallo, Salut, Hola, Ciao!

I am Justine Bauters, the new European Tourism Project Officer at NECSTouR. I will be supporting the team in a variety of tasks related to European Tourism projects.

My main tasks will consist of

• …Monitoring and helping the team further elaborating the Tourism of Tomorrow Lab and the NECSTouR Climate Action Plan
• …Contributing to a range of NECSTouR sustainable tourism projects and funding acquisition

Growing up as an ex-pat child, studying my bachelor’s in tourism in Brussels and working at a fast-growing travel start-up, gave me a wide range of insights into the functioning of our tourism ecosystem. I started querying the sense of sustainability and resilience of current destination management models. To find answers to these queries, I specialised myself through my master’s in Tourism Destination Management at the Breda University of Applied Sciences. For 6 months I gained theoretical knowledge on topics such as tourism governance, tourism research and project management. This theory was put into practice during a three-month field research on three different destinations in Europe. My crown accomplishment was my master thesis, which I wholeheartedly wrote about ‘Regenerative Tourism’. For this, I closely studied the strategy of Visit Flanders ‘Travel to Tomorrow’.

I believe that through NECSTouR and with all our valuable members, I will be able to contribute to fostering resilient, revitalized, and flourishing destinations in Europe. I am eagerly looking forward to meeting you and in the meantime, you can contact me via my email address justine.bauters@necstour.com or on my phone number ‪+32 (0) 471 53 70 43.