The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) and European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), commissioned ÖIR, HNEE and HSLU to conduct a study investigating unbalanced tourism growth at EU destinations. This study, titled “Unbalanced tourism growth at destination level – root causes, impacts, existing solutions and good practices”, spans from December 2020 until June 2022.
The study aims to contribute to the dialogue among tourism stakeholders (DMOs, infrastructure providers, NGOs and other relevant actors), on the topic of sustainable tourism, by organising a series of workshops. These workshops aim to connect tourism stakeholders to foster peer-to-peer learning on problems and solutions to unbalanced tourism growth. Participants are invited to present examples of solutions to unsustainable tourism growth and its environmental and socio-economic impacts on the regions. Moreover, challenges and bottlenecks hindering the mitigation of unbalanced tourism growth are examined. Ultimately, the workshop focuses on identifying concrete steps for destinations to move towards more sustainable practices and mitigate the impacts of unbalanced tourism growth.
This workshop series started with the island destination workshop in Malta (09.12.2021) and the urban destination workshop in Vienna (20/21.01.2022). Tourism stakeholders (citizen groups, destination managers, public officials, and infrastructure providers etc.) discussed root causes and impacts of overtourism, solution approaches and indicators to measure overtourism in interactive discussion formats. An essential component of the workshops were the peer-to-peer learning sessions with speakers from particularly affected destinations.
If you are interested in joining the following workshops, please let Ms Helene Gorny know ().
- Coastal destinations workshop hosted in Mallorca, Spain on 23.02.2022 (afternoon) and 24.02.2022 (morning)
- Rural destinations workshop hosted at the Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia on 17.03.2022
- Mountain destinations workshop location TBC, spring 2022
