Huesca – SmartCulTour

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)

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.

7th Huesca Living Lab meeting

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

Huesca Living Lab, with the collaboration of CIHEAM Zaragoza and Fractal Strategy, held yesterday the ‘Second workshop on co-design of tourism services and co-creation of the Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy for the territory of Huesca’, which is the seventh and last working meeting of the Living Lab.

After the training provided by UNESCO and the experiences of exchange and sharing of the best European strategies for the development of sustainable and cultural tourism, the objectives of this meeting were to explore together and individually the vision of tourism in Huesca, to define the goals and strategic lines, to conceptualise the strategy for cultural and sustainable tourism in Huesca and to list the first key actions of the strategy.

In the meeting, which had three different sessions, we conceptualised the strategy, established the vision by setting out three possible scenarios for the future as well as the objectives in terms of tourism in the province and presented, assessed and formalised different initiatives aimed at attracting tourists. We also worked on the objectives, target public, strategic lines and proposals for actions that will be contained in the ‘Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy for the territory of Huesca’.

Many thanks to all of you for your participation!

International Living Lab exchange in Huesca

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

From 26 to 27 October 2022 the international Living Lab exchange took place in Huesca. During the two days, the participants discovered the Aragonese province of Huesca with a specific focus on its cultural and sustainable tourism strategies aimed at promoting its rural landscapes and economies, the eno-gastronomic identity and all the best practices that are contributing to the development of the territory. Participants were accompanied by key actors from the regional tourism sector. Accordingly, representatives of regional tourism agencies as well as local mayors and private companies guided the activities towards the Province’s most peculiar tourism strategies.

Soon after becoming acquainted with Alquézar and its history of courageous revenge against phenomena of depopulation and isolation, the participants experienced the historical and cultural heritage of the centennial local olive varieties preserved in Buera. Likewise, the Alquézar walkways in the Vero River Canyon (Cañón del Río Vero) and the routes that reveal the Neolithic rock paintings, demonstrate how accessibility and protection could work hand in hand to define innovative strategies that do not diminish a destination’s intrinsic value of sustainability. Finally, participants learnt the entrepreneurial ideas of the “Ruta del Vino Somontano”, and heard more about the local eno-gastronomic identity. The latter, when properly communicated and valued, demonstrates the strong influence of the relationship between tourists and the territory.

All the activities have been coordinated to drive the progress of SmartCulTour forward. Each best practice proposed by the Living Lab exchange has been crucial to share innovative local examples that return new visions and knowledge to the international participants.

We thank you CIHEAM Zaragoza and TuHuesca (Turismo Provincia Huesca) for the event coordination.

The Huesca Living Lab benefits from the UNESCO capacity-building workshop on “Rethinking Cultural Tourism at your Destination”

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

On 17 October 2022, within the framework of UNESCO’s capacity-building programme on sustainable cultural tourism destination management for the benefit of the SmartCulTour Living Labs. The Huesca LL met with Peter Debrine, Senior Consultant to UNESCO on Sustainable Tourism. The workshop was held at the “Diputación Provincial de Huesca”, with 15 participants from the Huesca tourism sector representing local tourism promotion agencies, government delegates, entrepreneurs and tourism and cultural operators.

La farmacodopplerografía ecográfica de los vasos del pene está indicada para diagnosticar la disfunción eréctil. Durante el examen, se inyecta prostaglandina E1 en el pene no erecto, lo que se denomina sitio de ayuda «inyecciones intracavernosas».

The event opened with welcoming remarks by Alun Jones, Head of the Project Office of CIHEAM Zaragoza, and Costanza Fidelbo, Assistant Project Officer at the Culture unit of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (Venice, Italy).

Participants benefited from the comprehensive training on new approaches and strategies for sustainable tourism promotion. In particular, Peter Debrine provided insights into the Destination Management Approach and the integrated benefits deriving from its use, particularly when transversally embedded into cultural tourism interventions.

Participants co-designed innovative cultural tourism routes across the region through tailored storytelling, to boost local tourism promotion. As a result, the 3 groups presented different yet interconnected cultural tourism itineraries that illustrate the complexity of destination thinking as well as its potential positive impact.

It is evident from Post-COVID that tourists are continuously seeking authentic, sustainable experiences. Therefore, selecting and communicating the right messages are crucial to the strategic development of the entire sector and can help make a destination «desirable».

The workshop also supported participants in drafting a tourism promotion strategy inspired by the destination approach. This strategy incorporated unprecedented cultural narratives and innovative ways to communicate them through digital media and marketing.

Participants in the UNESCO capacity-building workshop have inspired and developed an entrepreneurial vision. Understanding how tourism can be more sustainable and strengthen ties between tourists, nature and local culture through their collective efforts.

We are grateful to Peter Debrine for such an enriching training opportunity. To UNESCO for tirelessly perpetuating its vital mission, including upholding sustainable forms of culture-based tourism and to all the participants.

Exploring Scheldeland during international exchange visits

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca, Scheldeland, Scheldeland nl, Utsjoki / Por Bart Neuts

From 20 to 22 June, the Scheldeland Living Lab received representatives of the living labs of Huesca and Utsjoki as part of the SmartCulTour project. These exchange visits form part of the SmartCulTour goals of knowledge dissemination, cross-border collaboration and the sharing of best practices in sustainable cultural tourism development.

Together with local stakeholders of Scheldeland, Griet Geudens of Visit Flanders and Vanessa Ágata de Abreu Santos and Bart Neuts of KU Leuven welcomed the visitors and guided them around the three partner municipalities of Bornem, Puurs-Sint-Amands and Dendermonde, focusing on particular cultural heritage venues, key natural resources and slow transportation modes that serve as a connector of potential network nodes. The living lab managers and other delegates got to visit these sites and carried out brainstorming sessions to look at opportunities, potential and possible thresholds.

After a challenging arrival due to a security personnel strike at Brussels Airport and subsequent rerouting of flights, on Tuesday 21 June a full day was scheduled. After an introduction to the Scheldeland Living Lab and an ice breaker exercise between the participants, an electric bicycle tour took the visitors via multiple points of interest in Puurs-Sint-Amands and Bornem. Via the bicycle tour, the delegates were introduced to the extensive cycling node network in Flanders. First stop was the Fortress of Liezele, a fortification built in 1908 and now housing multiple recreational and tourist attractions in and around the fortress such as a B&B, an escape room, a museum, an ice skating pond (in winter), a barefeet walking path and various walking routes. Next, the group cycled to castle D’Ursel, built in 1761 and now serving primarily as an event location, and its castle park and further via the Scheldt dykes to the Notelaer, a beautiful pavilion in neoclassical style with a magnificent view on the river Scheldt and also originally belonging to the duke of D’Ursel. In summertime, temporary accommodation is offered at the pavilion in the form of five tree-hung tents.

From there, visitors made their way to the castle of Marnix de Sainte-Alegonde. While the location had been home to fortifications and castle-structures since the 10^th to 11^th century, the current castle is a romanticized rendition from the end of the 19^th century. Closeby, the abbey of Bornem has been renovated and redeveloped to house a museum collection and offer both residential accommodation as event areas, with the immaculate library being a particular highlight of the tour.

After lunch, the group cycled to the village centre of Sint-Amands, on the Scheldt bank. Here they were introduced to the development plans of the village, and its central focus on both the tidal nature of the river and the artistic heritage of Sint-Amands, visible by both its link to historic writers and by some creative architecture in the village centre. From there, the bicycles were loaded onto a wagon of the steam train Puurs-Dendermonde and representatives got to ride on the renovated carriages and visit the steam locomotives and other carriages that are being restored and operated fully by volunteers. Participants were given an introduction to the organization and its working and participated in an exercise to map the sensory experiences of the trip.

On Wednesday 22 June, the representatives visited the city of Dendermonde where they received a guided tour and introduction to the legend of the horse of Bayard which is central to a procession being held every ten years, as well as some notable heritage sites such as the meat halls, the cloth halls (nowadays the city hall of Dendermonde), the justice palace and the beguinage, and the Dendermondse painting school. Afterwards Vanessa Ágata de Abreu Santos ran a workshop inviting the participants to conduct an emotions mapping exercise as part of a cultural mapping methodology.

4th Huesca Living Lab meeting

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Alun Jones

The 4th Huesca Living Lab meeting, which took place on 13th June aimed to identify opportunities for innovation in the tourism sector; devise sustainable tourist solutions/services applicable to the territory of Huesca; build prototypes of sustainable tourist solutions/services and lay the foundations for a future «Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy for the Territory of Huesca».

The session was divided into two working groups and was structured in two phases. First, the participants identified and defined concrete areas of opportunity to design sustainable, people-based tourism services through different creativity techniques to devise solutions according to the areas of opportunity. Later, the groups transformed ideas into service concepts and built prototypes of concepts to share and assess together with the other groups. Finally, they discussed common needs for implementing service concepts in the future «Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy for the Territory of Huesca».

As a result of the session, two initiatives were proposed: one focused on a fun family nature weekend model and the other on a relaxing gastronomic experience with the kids. Both will be further developed in future Living Lab meetings.

Utjoski, Scheldeland and Huesca Living Labs share success stories of sustainable cultural tourism

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

On 24 and 25 May, Utjoski’s living lab hosted one of the six exchanges programmed between the LLs of the SmartCulTour project. On this occasion, the Huesca and Scheldeland living lab managers and main stakeholders visited Finland to learn the methodologies and see the interventions made by their Finnish counterparts first hand. This was a great opportunity to share unique experiences to enrich and improve the quality of tourist services in the project’s regions.

On the first day, one of the main stakeholders of the Utsjoki living lab gave their visitors a guided tour to see the cultural and tourist attractions of the area and learn more details, in particular about the Sami culture that the Utsjoki LL is focusing on in their analysis. In the afternoon, the group tested the Placemaking Method for the first time in the project. The method uses a working dynamics approach to favour connexion between tourists and their surroundings and enhance the services they demand and the experiences they enjoy at their tourist destinations.

The next day was devoted to a working session with some of the LL stakeholders, giving the Spanish and Belgian teams the chance to learn more about the work in Utsjoki and exchange opinions with the Finnish participants. They all took part in a working meeting focused on improving tourist proposals previously designed for the territory. They also examined the major results of the tourist survey to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Utsjoki as a sustainable cultural tourist destination.

Scheldeland will be hosting the next exchange in June later this month, followed by another exchange in Huesca in October 2022.

Training of Trainers sessions in Huesca

Deja un comentario / General, Huesca / Por Hong Li

The SmartCulTour project held a two-day Training of Trainers sessions in Huesca, Spain. The sessions were planned for project partners working with their Living Lab stakeholders and tourism development. The aim was to offer more hands-on and practical training for multiple tools created and developed in the project. Let’s look at how the sessions were organized and facilitated from the WP 7 point of view, who took responsibility for the training.

The SmartCulTour project has constructed various tools and methods for developing sustainable cultural tourism. Most of them are already published separately as part of the Set of Service Design and Art-Based Methods for Co-Design and Stakeholder Work in Cultural Tourism or as part of the SmartCulTour Dashboard and the SmartCulTour Game. We selected ten tools and methods and planned a workshop structure where participants systematically progressed from one tool or method to another, utilizing and constructing the data and insights from one tool and using them in a next. The workshop was an overview of a design process, starting from the discover phase and ending in the developing phase.

Pictures: Bert Smit, Iris Kerst and Mira Alhonsuo.

There were multiple purposes for the Training of Trainers session. First of all, we aimed to apply service design and art-based tools developed for the SmartCulTour project. We selected several tools and methods from the toolkit of Set of Service Design and Art-Based Methods for Co-Design and Stakeholder Work in Cultural Tourism. We also clarified when and which tools can be used in which phase of the development process. During the practice-based hands-on work, we exchanged ideas on using the tools for different Living Lab purposes. We also evaluated the tools and methods for further development and the final deliverable 7.3. In addition, the final goal of the Training of Trainers sessions was to get to know each other and introduce some tips for facilitating co-creation workshops. The picture below illustrates the ten different tools and methods presented and trained during the sessions and the design process the tools belong to.

Diagram: The ten tools and methods in the Double diamond design process.

Program

We focused on the Huesca region during the intensive two days while training the tools and methods. It was a logical choice because we were located in the area. Having at least a little bit of a concrete context around us made the training more focused. Let’s take a closer look at what happened during these two days.

Day 1

The first training day was organized in Loarre, the beautiful rural village in Huesca province. We started the Training of Trainers session with the Placemaking method not previously described in the Service Design and Art-Based Methods toolkit. The method involved a pre-assignment sent to participants two weeks earlier. We asked participants to record a 360-degree, 1-minute video of a location that is somehow significant to them. At the beginning of the workshop, we utilized the placemaking method as a stakeholder engagement action. The participants first introduced themselves and explained why the place in the video was meaningful for them. Then the video was shown. The placemaking was a great starting point for getting to know each other and understanding different levels of meaningful places of others. It was fascinating to hear very personal stories from the participants.

After the placemaking, we introduced the Double diamond design process and clarified where the tools and methods belong. We also introduced the Huesca region and the challenges highlighted from the Living Lab data of Huesca. Also, the SmartCulTour Platform was presented from the viewpoint of Huesca region dashboard. This introduction gave participants an understanding of what kind of material they will be working with over two days. As an example of the materials, we pre-developed four tourist personas utilized in follow-up methods.

We then went through the system mapping and visitor flow mapping, both introduced in the Service Design and Art-Based Methods toolkit. Here, we grouped the participants into teams of four people. They got their destination in Huesca region and utilized personas as a part of the tools. The system maps are overviews of tourism, cultural, historical, and entrepreneurial destination resources, which are visualized on a geographical map of the destination. Those can be understood as a library of exciting places, sights, and events that form the cultural tourism system. Visitor flow maps provide a sequenced overview of touchpoints (or activities) that tourists combine while visiting (an area of) a destination. Together these two tools provided insightful knowledge of Huesca region.

We focused on playing the SmartCulTour Game at the end of the day. It was the first time playing and evaluating the game for almost all of the partners. The playing took quite a lot of time, but it was indeed worth it. In particular, Living Lab managers need to understand the game structure from the perspective of both the player and the facilitator. Most participants noticed that taking on the role of a particular type of stakeholder helps to empathize with their stakes and stakeholding issues in cultural tourism development.

Day 2

We started our next day by traveling from Loarre back to CIHEAM Zaragoza, where we held our morning program. We started the day by introducing the House of Quality method, utilizing the data from the previous day. The House of Quality method was presented using clear examples, which offered an in-depth understanding of using the method. As a result of the House of Quality, some first ideas for cultural tourism interventions were presented, then used in the following tools: Ideation washing machine and Multi-method process flow. The ideation washing machine was a new meth We started our next day by traveling from Loarre back to CIHEAM Zaragoza, where we held our morning program. We started the day by introducing the House of Quality method, utilizing the data from the previous day. The House of Quality method was presented using clear examples, which offered an in-depth understanding of using the method. As a result of the House of Quality, some first ideas for cultural tourism interventions were presented, then used in the following tools: Ideation washing machine and Multi-method process flow. The ideation washing machine was a new method for the partners and used for the first time in tourism development. It aims to give very out-of-the-box ideas combining interventions from House of Quality, keywords of meaningful place in the Placemaking method, and an extra, an action or object that makes a person feel happy or joyful. Combining these three elements, the ideas were brainstormed a little differently than usual. The teams chose one of the ideas and developed it further by using the Multi-method process flow. The method helps participants consider the unique local assets they identify as culturally interesting ones, employing stories and senses to design a sophisticated experience for cultural tourists.
The final tool we used was Destination Design Roadmapping. The tool was used to support destinations to make conscious choices to set up a roadmap to prioritize the implementation of interventions based on resources under development and identified with system mapping. As an overall objective for tourism in destinations and using Destination Design Roadmapping, we can achieve: recent experiences/offerings, value proposition portfolio, experience supporting features, and support resources.

Conclusion

The two-day intensive program was certainly very tiring for many partners. Still, we received a lot of positive and enthusiastic feedback. Many of the methods were seen as valuable and helpful in our Living Lab locations. The application of the tools and methods was also considered during the days and afterward. The WP7 team evaluated the tools and methods using a survey sent to all participants after the Training of Trainers. The tools will be customized based on wishes and ideas, then introduced and described more in-depth in the final SmartCulTour Toolkit on cultural tourism policy development. The tools will assist development of policy recommendations and guidelines for cultural tourism, based on relevant stakeholders’ perceptions of key issues and opportunities. In addition, the WP7 will provide a Training aid for implementing the SmartCulTour Toolkit. These deliverables will be published in autumn 2022.