NECSTouR President Dr. Manuel Alejandro Cardenete, deputy-minister from Andalucía Region, presented the Tourism of Tomorrow Lab and data-oriented projects in the Mediterranean area during PANORAMED high-level event on coastal and maritime tourism. It was the first public event unveiling our Handbook on How to use EU recovery funds and ERDF 2021-2027 for sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean region.

The High-Level Event is an international and multi-stakeholder event planned and organised by the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds of the Republic of Croatia (MRDEUF) as the leader of PANORAMED’s Work Package 5 on Coastal and Maritime Tourism, in cooperation with the Tuscany Region, a NECSTouR member, as co-leader. This event was broadcasted online from Zagreb (Croatia) on the 23rd of March 2022 under the title “Better Governance for Smarter and More Resilient Tourism in the MED”.

During the first panel on “the obstacles and opportunities of tourism data gathering and sharing”, our president declared “NECSTouR is an example of destinations cooperating and competing at the same time. We are a group of regions (with competing interests) organized as a network and cooperating in order to achieve common goals. Knowledge transfer is a clear beneficial cooperation among regions and destinations.  Two of our latest examples in this respect are: the Interreg MED Sustainable Tourism Community and the Tourism of Tomorrow Lab”.

In the Interreg MED Sustainable Tourism community, several projects have been specifically working on measuring sustainability and indicators within the MED Sustainable Tourism Community. Many of them are based on the knowledge built by the ETIS and other relevant initiatives. BESTMED is a good example of the reuse and the adding value of outputs like the MITOMED+ Platform. This platform created for measuring the sustainability of beaches in coastal areas has been adapted and now embraces cultural routes too in an effort to be efficient.

The Tourism of Tomorrow Lab, is now a new department of NECSTouR, and has officially started its operations in 2022, led by Andalusia. We are already working with 7 premium members: Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, Lapland, Occitanie, Navarra and the Basque Country. “Now NECSTouR is a key player for tourism statistics at the European and international level thanks to the development of the Tourism of Tomorrow Lab”.

Handbook on How to use EU recovery funds and ERDF 2021-2027 for sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean region

Josep Rodriguez, from la Diputacio de Barcelona (Barcelona County), the Lead Partner of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community, presented our work on the Handbook on how to fund sustainable tourism through the next generation EU and ERDF funds.

A deliverable commissioned by NECSTouR and directed by the think-tank Spatial Foresight. This handbook is directly related to the DG Regio Study on the Regional impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the tourist sector, already developed by Spatial Foresight and endorsed by NECSTouR members during our AGM in Tyrol.  

The goal is to provide European Tourism stakeholders with a deep overview of the opportunities to finance sustainable tourism measures, invest in the tourism of tomorrow (green, digital, social, resilience) through both the ERDF and the national recovery and resilience plans in the countries eligible to the MED programme and to formulate policy recommendations in the context of the Mediterranean tourism recovery and the transition to sustainability, digitalisation, and resilience.

More Information

Read the final summary report here