research; third mission
BEST MED project operates in eight Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece and Montenegro) with the purpose of enhancing Mediterranean Governance and to develop an observatory about Tourism of this area. Its main challenges are the reduction of tourism seasonality, the growing cooperation among tourism actors, the citizens’ active participation to the design of policies. A series of thematic seminars will be organized to discuss about these topics. BEST MED aims at a sustainable tourism planning and to mitigate seasonality in the MED area by the connection of coastal and inland regions. A testing phase will allow to build a joint model that will be transferred and capitalised, together with a set of toolkit and indicators. BEST MED follows a strategy of previous approaches and outputs and it will test an updated toolkit of data and indicators, thus contributing to the design of a new green model (MED S&C Path- Sustainable Path & Cultural Routes Model). The latter will integrate the tourism planning with more general development strategies and will mobilize key players at a local and transnational level. As a result, this will create synergies across countries and will enhance the awareness of the MED area.
A Charter on Sustainable Tourism (Granada Charter) will be signed at the end of the project for transferability and sustainability of outputs.
The role of the CAST is to support the Italian region of Lazio and BEST MED partners as an external expert, in particular providing its scientific support for the “Studying Phase” (Work Package 3) necessary for the development of a knowledge framework about the project’s goals. The framework will incude:
• Base information for a network of tourism observatories in the Mediterranean.
• Information to develop the MED Sustainable Path and Cultural Routes Model (MED S&C Path) inspired to the Mitomed+ project “Green Beach Model” and to other MED projects.
The study has reviewed existing methodological approaches on tourism data and observatories and analysed previous experiences on tourism data knowledge, finding gaps and needs in data collection management. Moreover, BEST MED has pinpointed results and suggestions from the previous MED projects in order to better identify its outcomes:
1. The Med S&C Path Model to improve the management of Cultural Routes and Paths and assess their sustainability level using a set of criteria and indicators.
2. A Network of Mediterranean Sustainable Tourism Observatories (MED NSTO) to facilitate the exchange of data and best practices
Period of the project: 2020 - 2022
Scientific Coordinators: Cristina Bernini, Alessia Mariotti, Patrizia Battilani
Team of research: Maria Laura Gasparini, Valeria Villalobos
Keywords: tourism observatory; Mediterranean sea; international cooperation; sustainable tourism
Funding Programme: Interreg Mediterranean 2014-2020
Website: https://best-med.interreg-med.eu/