TOURISMO

The tourism industry, in the pre-pandemic years, focused almost exclusively on growth, with little concern for long-term impacts on territories. Thus, persistent challenges, like overtourism, continue to affect destinations & communities across the Med region. TOURISMO acknowledges that a shift to conscious and sustainable tourism requires innovative approaches, participation of various ecosystem stakeholders, an improvement of the tourist experience & a stronger engagement of end users. TOURISMO aims at addressing these challenges by using innovative technologies that offer new solutions and novel services to monitor and manage tourist flows. By exploiting the foundations laid by its predecessor HERIT-DATA, TOURISMO will keep boosting innovation through new methodologies and tools in areas with high tourism pressure. Better flows handling will be implemented through the development of a monitoring & decisionmaking support management structure and testing in 7 MED pilot sites. The approach is based on utilizing data from various datasets and on-site technologies (ie thermal cameras, pax counters, drones, tags) relevant to tourists’ presence, density, trajectories and behaviors, with the support of an enriched version of HERIT-DATA platform, developed and managed by University of Florence. The partnership embeds a variety of location profiles (UNESCO areas, ports, city centers, beaches, cultural monuments, parks etc.) from 7 European countries (GR, IT, ES, CY, BG, HR & MT) & different stakeholders of the value chain (Development Agencies, RTOs, Scientific experts, Innovation Institutes and Intermediaries, NGOs) allowing to test solutions in different environments, as well as capitalizing previous experience, guaranteeing simultaneously a high degree of innovation. Actions foreseen address directly or indirectly the key groups of stakeholders namely public authorities, tourist agencies, DMOs, solution providers &the traditional tourism SMEs.