Alun Jones – SmartCulTour

Policy Recommendations by Horizon2020 Sustainable Cultural Tourism Projects

Deja un comentario / General / Por Alun Jones

This report is the direct result of the policy workshop of 5 July 2022 in Lisbon and Brussels’ round table of 11 October 2022, organized by DG RTD and REA and involving six research projects on cultural tourism funded under the recent Horizon 2020 calls (Be.Cultour, TexTOUR, SPOT, IMPACTOUR, SmartCulTour and INCULTUM. The report contains the main findings and outcomes regarding three main areas: (i) EU Policy and Europeanization, (ii) Research and Innovation, and (iii) Sustainability and Infrastructure.

Within the area of EU Policy and Europeanization, the authors highlight the tangible and recognized potential of cultural tourism but note that additional steps are needed in order to make Tourism a full-value policy sector, also being more specifically recognized within the Green Deal and Structural Development Fund programmes. European routes and joint ticketing systems are identified as important programmes to create linkages around common themes, instigating a sense of ‘Europeanization’ which can further be supported through education, particularly via Erasmus and Erasmus+ programmes.

On the area of Research and Innovation, main policy recommendations relate to the consolidation of new and developed technologies, calling for a Cultural Tourism Cluster to aggregate already developed tools in order to avoid dispersion and reduced usage. Furthermore, within the EC Research & Innovation coordination policy, non-research partners could be asked to deliver credible business plans for measurable and tangible exploitation of results. Innovation is seen as having a crucial role for the further (sustainable) development of cultural tourism and continued support in the form of funding is of particular importance. This also entails providing clear and accurate congregated information on funding possibilities and guidelines for optimal usage. At the same time, in order to make innovations work for local communities, support training for local communities and business should be a central focus.

Finally, within the reflection on Sustainability and Infrastructure, the focus is placed primarily on strategies and policies to support sustainable cultural tourism development. Active heritage communities, included via participatory methodologies are seen as valuable approaches to more effectively integrate potential stakeholder conflicts and overcome these. Furthermore, action-training mechanisms can not only activate local heritage communities in co-developing methods but also in adapting these to local contexts to further facilitate the spread of good practices. Furthermore, in an economic sense, the characteristics of tourism as often consuming – for large part – public goods and leading to an uneven spread of costs and benefits, require a rethink of possibilities to sharing (pooling) costs and benefits of territorial development in more equal fashion. Lastly, even with best intentions, modern innovations, digitization, etc., certain marginal territories do 5 remain limited by important material problems such as lack of infrastructure and mobility. Methodologically analysing such situations, including searching for good practices, and conditions for locally implementing least costly solutions might help to overcome these deficits, particularly when combined with potential financial mechanisms.

Policy Recommendations by Horizon2020 Sustainable Cultural Tourism ProjectsDownload

Final Huesca Living Lab report

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

Sustainable cultural tourism policies can significantly support the development of the European regions. Cultural tourism, especially in rural areas but also in the urban periphery, can emerge as a factor of economic growth. The EU-funded SmartCulTour project has intended to redefine the concept of cultural tourism to provide European regions with strategies that engage stakeholders in co-creating smart cultural tourism practices. The project has developed a decision support system that enables comprehensive monitoring of regions through a combination of traditional and non-traditional data sources.

One of the main objectives of SmartCulTour has been to facilitate community-led rural development through field experiments in 6 living laboratories: the Scheldeland region in Flanders (Belgium); the municipality of Utsjoki in Lapland (Finland); the province of Huesca (Spain); the county of Split-Dalmatia (Croatia); the city of Vicenza (Italy); and the metropolitan region of Rotterdam (the Netherlands). The living labs have tested creative and novel approaches to stakeholder engagement, including arts-based methods, serious games and the design of services that help provide local context and support.

Huesca was selected as a laboratory because it aspires to be a world class destination and has all the tourist infrastructure available, including both cultural and natural beauty sites. Outside of Spain, Huesca is almost an unexplored paradise of cultural heritage. There is definitely room for growth in terms of numbers of tourists, but this growth would need to be carefully managed to preserve the integrity of both natural and cultural sites. Ironically, Huesca experiences saturation during the peak summer months and this would also be one of the challenges, where it would need help in sustainably managing growing volumes of flows.

In addition to depopulation, other socio-economic and environmental challenges include the abandonment of farming as an economic activity, the impact of climate change, environmental sustainability of the rural landscape and the degradation of natural resources through human activity.

This document, «Huesca’s Sustainable Cultural Tourism Development Strategy «, summarizes the results of the 7 meetings held by different stakeholders in the province’s tourism sector and aims to serve as a guide to boost tourism and make it a preferred destination for those seeking quality cultural and sustainable tourism.

Take a look at the Huesca’s Sustainable Cultural Tourism Development Strategy (in Spanish)Download

Culture as catalyst: New tourism trends to be explored in the EU-funded SmartCulTour Final Conference in Brussels

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca, Rotterdam, Scheldeland, Split, Utsjoki, Vicenza / Por Alun Jones

Stakeholders of the cultural tourism sector in Europe are invited to join the Final Conference of the EU-funded project SmartCulTour on 24 May in Brussels. The event will bring together international experts to explore emerging tourism trends and identify priorities to redefine cultural tourism for sustainable destinations.

The conference will tackle the importance of harnessing the power of culture and local values to redefine the visitor experience. The lineup of confirmed speakers will include UNESCO, European Commission (various DGs), MEPs István Ujhelyi and Marcos Ros, ICOMOS and leading EU and National cultural and tourism bodies as we debate the future of cultural tourism in Europe.

Since SmartCulTour started in January 2020, the project has supported the development of European regions by providing them with a set of strategies to engage with stakeholders and co-create sustainable cultural tourism experiences.

The project has been deployed through six living labs across Europe (Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain). The project’s tools and the different experiences of the SmartCulTour Living Labs with key target audiences will be shared during the closing conference of the project.

DATE: Wednesday 24 May 2023
TIME: 09:15 – 18:30 h
VENUE: Herman Teirlinckgebouw building (Havenlaan 88, 1000 – Brussels, Belgium)
REGISTRATION: Register on the SmartCulTour website to attend the event (smartcultour.eu)

Planning for the future of Hoek van Holland & Bospolder-Tussendijken – Rotterdam LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Rotterdam / Por Alun Jones

The Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Rotterdam is one of the six Living Labs (LLs) participating in the European project SmartCulTour. The aim of the Living Labs is to encourage networking between stakeholders in the tourism sector in order to develop best practices and innovative solutions for sustainable cultural tourism, which can also be exchanged with other European regions. The Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Rotterdam focuses on two Rotterdam neighbourhoods: Hoek van Holland and Bospolder-Tussendijken. The LL’s goal is to (further) develop cultural tourism in these two districts in order to contribute to their sustainable development as a whole.

During the project, several meetings were held with stakeholders from both areas to discuss various tools to further stimulate cultural tourism. One of the sessions focused on the SmartCulTour Serious Game, which enabled participants to understand what kind of influence possible interventions would have on other actors. Stakeholders and researchers then worked with these possible interventions during the ideation washing machine & roadmapping session. The goal of this session was to come up with a creative mix of interventions that could be implemented in the future, along with a realistic planning to actually carry them out.

Currently, based on this last session, researchers from both neighbourhoods are writing a report that can be presented to the municipality of Rotterdam and other stakeholders involved in the development of the concerned areas. It is expected that these reports, including recommended interventions, will be able to guide and uphold the sustainable development of both neighbourhoods. A major advantage here is the fact that the interventions were designed through a bottom-up approach, and that there is a clear planning that can be adhered to. In addition, the reports identify all stakeholders that could possibly help realise the interventions. Finally, whom should take ownership of each intervention is mentioned. This ensures that, with the help of funding, concrete steps can be taken for the benefit of targeted neighbourhoods.

The Somontano Wine Route: a resilient strategy for Huesca – Huesca LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

The Ruta del Vino Somontano (or Somontano Wine Route) territorial project concerns the area of Barbastro (Huesca), identified as the county of “Somontano de Barbastro” in the region of Aragón, Spain. It is an exemplary process of diversification of the local rural economy. The intervention leverages the socio-economic and cultural assets of the area by promoting linkages between civil society and businesses, the individual and the collective spheres, as well as harnessing the potential arising from the alliance between public and private actions. The binding element used by the Somontano Wine Route development project is wine, which has become an identifier (or identificador) of the area, bringing together several productive and cultural sectors.

For this reason, the wine industry under the Somontano Designation of Origin, together with the Barbastro City Council and the County of Somontano, created the Ruta del Vino Somontano in 2006. The Ruta takes advantage of the territory’s resources and considers wine as an “active agent”, something well internalized and identified by the local community. The Somontano Wine Route initiative is not only a tourism product, but also a high-quality strategy managed within the Wine Routes of Spain project, led by the Spanish Association of Wine Cities (ACEVIN).

Two dedicated websites, “rutadelvinosomontano.com” and “dosomontano.com”, publicise the project’s mission and proposed experiences. The websites tell the history of the territory and recommend a multitude of eligible experiences offered by the Ruta. Wineries, urban spaces, festivals, locally-sourced food, restaurants, natural parks, hiking and sports activities, religious tourism, cultural parks, are all available with one simple click. Moreover, with the special Somontano wine bus, visitors can easily reach rural destinations from urban centres such as Zaragoza, Barbastro and Huesca, thereby enjoying a touristic programme that offers different seasonal itineraries. The wine bus also helps bypass the structural transport barriers that characterise rural areas and widens the project’s impact by involving another economic sector in the development strategy.

Finally, the strong promotional campaigns put in place throughout the territory and on the Internet contributed to making the Somontano Wine Route the ninth (out of twenty-nine) preferred enotourism destination in the country. According to a 2019 study carried out by ACEVIN, 16.8 % of the enotourists around Spain would like to visit the route in the future.

Vicenza: the city of Palladio – Vicenza LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Vicenza / Por Alun Jones

The “City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto” is a serial World Heritage property that includes the city of Vicenza and twenty-four Palladian villas scattered throughout the Veneto region. Vicenza presents itself to tourists as the city of Andrea Palladio, but surveys and interviews show that only a few know Vicenza as the city of Palladio or choose the destination for its Renaissance architecture. Although perceived as a cultural destination, Vicenza is rather preferred by people who love immersive and slow tourism and wish to visit other Italian cities beyond the most renowned ones (e.g. Venice, Rome, Florence, Milan and Naples).

Visitors in Vicenza find themselves immersed in a city that lives its daily life surrounded by the beauty of its architecture, urban backdrops and Renaissance stages among squares, theatres, villas, and hills. Vicenza is still able to amaze enough to take the tourist beyond the imaginary. However, such wow effect is not to be taken for granted but to be enhanced through new narratives and cultural events capable of animating the city.

Today the tourism market tends to be specialized, in order to offer a customized product to consumers. The process of globalization thus pushes every tourism destination to build a strong and recognizable identity in the collective imagination, so that it can be clearly distinguished from other proposals. Therefore, when devising new strategies to attract tourists to Vicenza, it is necessary to maintain the «Palladian wow effect», while seeking new claims capable of intercepting new audiences.

In this perspective, the Lab members pursue to improve skills and knowledge of tourism operators, including restaurateurs, hoteliers, shopkeepers, event organizers, travel agencies, managers of UNESCO designated sites, museums and theaters, etc. The Living Lab also provides a space for training and research: researchers and operators meet to analyze the trends of the cultural tourism market at a global and local level, learning to interpret data and use them to make decisions and design innovative marketing strategies and new cultural-creative tourism products.

Traces in Utsjoki: inspiring respectful visitor behaviour in nature areas – Utsjoki LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Utsjoki / Por Alun Jones

“Traces in Utsjoki” is a concept for managing and influencing Utsjoki visitors’ behavior and actions in nature and raising environmental and cultural awareness. The concept consists of three parts, which are the bingo game for tracking traces in nature, the photo gallery for collecting and combining photos of the traces in the public online-based photo gallery, and informative posters for guiding the tourists’ behavior in nature. The main purpose of the concept is to increase the awareness and respect of natural surroundings and demonstrate the problems of misbehavior in nature and littering to the visitors and locals in Utsjoki in a participatory and playful way.

Visitors and locals can spot different traces in nature that do not belong to the local ecosystem, but also traces that do belong to it and should be treated with respect. The bingo game aims to increase tourists’ awareness through the observation of nature in both good and bad conditions. The bingo paper-based game board can be picked up from the tourist info in Village house Giisá. Hikers and visitors can play the bingo, document their found traces by taking pictures, and then upload the pictures on the Traces in Utsjoki gallery, which could be published on Utsjoki municipality’s webpage.

The Traces in Utsjoki gallery is a browser-based real-time photo gallery of the pictures taken by people walking or hiking around Utsjoki’s nature. The idea of the gallery is that, when you find a trace in nature, either negative or positive, you take a picture with your mobile phone and upload it to the photo gallery accessible through the Utsjoki municipality’s website. It is also possible to mark the exact location where the trace was found when uploading the picture. This allows monitoring the areas that have the biggest littering problem or many piles of stones, for example. Every month the statistics of «Traces of the months» are visible on the webpage, as well as displayed on the tourism info screen, which could be placed in the Village House Giisá. The administration rights of the photo gallery would belong to the Municipality of Utsjoki.

Traces in Utsjoki posters are part of the concept aiming to draw the attention of hikers and visitors to traces that do not belong to nature. The posters show evocative images of, for example, litter or other waste in nature and can be displayed in places where littering problems occur the most (identified, for example, with the help of the Traces in Utsjoki gallery). Posters should be located in places where they do not cause visual harm to the scenery. A poster with pictures of human waste in nature can be placed, for example, on the wall of the inside door of a public toilet, where visitors can be kindly reminded that toilet paper should not be left in nature either. In the picture in the middle of the poster, on the one side, misbehavior could be depicted, while on the other side the ideal situation of how to deal with waste could be displayed. Using creativity and humor in posters helps send the message in positive ways.

The Municipality of Utsjoki and the residents benefit from this concept since it improves the general well-being of the local people and the attractiveness of the area. The gallery helps collect data related to behavior in nature, which can potentially be used for different purposes such as arranging bins in some specific spots or informing tourists. The game can also be an educational tool for children: indeed, spotting different animal tracks gives a positive and playful aspect to the exercise. Identifying different traces in nature, including animals’ ones, may help learn about the local nature and its diversity. The goal of the game is to reduce the environmentally negative traces and collect the most positive ones in the gallery while increasing tourists’ appreciation for nature. Collecting litter and reporting it with pictures can uplift tourists’ feeling that they have done something good for the local community during their travels. It supports the development of more sustainable and balanced tourism, where both local people and tourists can enjoy and preserve nature.

The gallery could serve other purposes as well, such as providing information about the local Sámi culture, which was one of the needs identified by the Utsjoki Living Lab in order to develop sustainable cultural tourism in the municipality. In Sámi cultures, nature and culture are intertwined, hence the gallery could be used for providing correct information on the Sámi culture as well and the nature relations, which may also help uphold locals’ ownership and cultural identity.

The cultural heritage of Sinj: the story of Alka – Split LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Split / Por Alun Jones

For local communities, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can be a valuable tourism resource. It can assist managers from the culture and tourism sectors in deepening the heritage experiences of locals and visitors, as well as in encouraging visitors to stay longer and increase their expenditure at the destination rather than coming and going without truly connecting with local people and places. The town of Sinj has a rich cultural heritage, and since the 18th century, it has hosted its trademark event, namely the annual chivalric tournament Sinjska Alka. The event is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2010. To promote the preservation of the tradition, the entire community participates in the creation, conservation, restoration, and reconstruction of weapons, clothing, and accessories. During this process, Mrs. Liljana Vojković plays an essential role, as she is the only person who possesses the skills of weaving opanci oputari, the shoes used by the Alka knights. To preserve this skill and transmit it to future generations, it is needed to enhance its valorization in a sustainable way. There are plenty of opportunities to do so. For instance, heritage interpretation workshops could be organized in collaboration with the Alka Museum or the Sinj Tourist Board, thereby offering both tourists and locals the opportunity to learn about the process of making opanci oputari, as well as get involved in it. Furthermore, the samples of opanci oputari, in their standard or smaller size (for souvenir purposes), could be produced and sold in collaboration with the local businesses. The most appropriate places to sell them would be local marketplaces, souvenir shops and local fairs, the so-called the derneci (sg. dernek, parish folk fête) at Sinj, Trilj, Split, Trogir, Kaštela, Solin, Omiš, Imotski etc.

Tadalafilo. Inhibidor de la FDE-5 con efecto prolongado masculinafuerte.com. La semivida de eliminación alcanza las 36 horas. Se puede tomar en una dosis mínima constante, 1 comprimido al día, lo que garantiza la espontaneidad de la vida sexual

Bornem Castle: Upgrading of historical exhibits and creation of a visitor information centre – Scheldeland LL intervention

Deja un comentario / Cultural Tourism Interventions, General, Scheldeland / Por Alun Jones

Bornem Castle (also known as Castle Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde) has a more than thousand year history, starting with a wooden guard tower, evolving into a motte castle and finally a stone castle. The current castle was completely rebuilt at the end of the 19th century and has been the property of the family de Marnix since 1773, currently still being occupied by count John de Marnix. Given that the castle is under private ownership, opening up the castle and castle grounds for visitors is not straightforward. The project that is the focus of this practice abstract was the development of a visitor centre, and the improvement of the museal exhibits of the castle, with an eye on improving visitor accessibility and linking the castle of Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde with a wider network as part of the «Castles of the Scheldt» project. The project coordinator worked in close collaboration with the local destination management organizations and the private owner of the castle, with project subsidies coming from the Flemish policy level, in order to balance project objectives with private interests and respect for privacy of the castle occupants. The Philips de Marnix-exhibition, focussing on the history of the family’s ancestor that was the right-hand man of Willem of Orange in the 16th century, and the private collection of Brueghel the Elder engravings, were updated to modern interpretation standards and through the new visitor centre, visitors receive the historical information of the castle, the wider region of Bornem, and the other sites of the project. The information centre also serves a starting point for guided tours that are offered from the 1st of April to the 15th of November. Importantly, the visitor information centre also serves as a central node in another tourism-recreational product: the prospective National Park «Valley of the Scheldt» (i.e. «Rivierpark Scheldevallei»). Bornem Castle serves as one of the access gates to the prospective national park, thereby linking this unique cultural heritage site with a nature-focused tourism experience as well. The intervention shows how collaborative efforts between private-public partners, supported by a shared higher-level vision can overcome initial difficulties to open up accessibility to cultural heritage. Furthermore, by envisioning the visitor information centre as a node in both a larger castle route and as an entrance gate to a prospective national park, the attraction becomes elevated and the potential positive impacts for the region increase accordingly by creating routes, rather than singular point attractions.

3rd SmartCulTour annual meeting

Deja un comentario / General / Por Alun Jones

The European H2020 project SmartCulTour held on 15 December in Breda (The Netherlands) its third annual meeting in hybrid format (online and face-to-face) with the participation of all project partners.

The meeting was divided into two distinct sessions: during the morning, topics of interest for all project partners were discussed, such as the main achievements and milestones, the current and expected tasks and results, a summary of the communication activities and an overview of the budget and the PMs of each partner.

In the afternoon, the session, led by UNESCO, focused on the Living Labs and addressed the main findings of the LL evaluation, lessons learned and good practices, as well as co-designed a draft for the final Living Labs report and the LL afterlife strategy. At the end of the session, the agenda and speakers for the final conference of the project to be held in May 2023, as well as the 3rd regional workshop (18 April) and the afterlife strategy were discussed.