engleski

Smart strategies for sustainable tourism in LIvely cultural DEStinations (S.LI.DES)

In normal, pre-pandemic times, many cultural destinations experienced damaging pressure on local cultural and natural heritage, as well as on the quality of life of the local community, especially during peak season and special events. The spatial and temporal concentration of visitor flows was the most common problem among these destinations. The problem was even more serious in coastal cities that are also home ports or ports of call, such as those on the Adriatic coast, where cruise tourism often contributes to increasing the volume of visitor flows already present in the area. Aware of this, the partner cities of the project S.LI.DES (Dubrovnik, Šibenik, Venice, Ferrara, and Bari) agreed to plan and build a common knowledge system to support their decision-making processes and develop appropriate transnational strategies, by involving a group of technical partners (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice- Department of Management, CISET- International Centre of Studies on Tourism Economics, Institute for Tourism, CAST- University of Bologna, Ecipa- Service and Training Agency, and Craft College- Institution for adult education Subsidiary Rijeka). In order to realize this goal, S.LI.DES partners decided to develop a Smart Destination Ecosystem as a method to dynamically analyse different aspects of the cultural heritage of the project destinations, monitor visitor mobility patterns, and identify the potential of valuable skills and “know-how” to enhance the visitor experience. Smart Destination Ecosystem consists of four main components: 1. Destination datahub, 2. Destination mobility models, 3. Mapping of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with a focus on artisanal activities, 4. Destination dashboard. The first three components are closely related. The design of the mobility models requires the use of economic, social, tourism, and mobility data contained in the datahub (e.g., data on the local population, on the evolution of tourism flows and their distribution by mode of transport). At the same time, the results of the analysis related to the mobility models provide additional information on local mobility patterns that are added to the datahub. Real-time mobility data is collected via devices such as sensors and video cameras installed in each of the partner cities. In the same way, data collected through the mapping of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, evolution, and typology of craft activities and CCIs, contribute to populating the related section of the destination datahub. The destination dashboard is cross-section to all blocks, as it translates the outputs of the previous activities into user-friendly knowledge for city managers. The panel layout displays the city performance on different aspects using tabular and visual tools (e.g., graphics, dynamic maps). All data contribute to assessing the competitive and sustainable performance of the destinations, supporting the development of actions aimed at diversifying tourism offer through targeted investments in cultural heritage, and designing a cross-border smart strategy transferable to the EU level. All the above-mentioned components are ready for use and are being tested in pilot actions organized by partner cities. Due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19, tourist destinations are currently experiencing under-tourism but confronted with deadlines, partners have to test the system during this (2021) summer season. They have prepared few different scenarios so that they can easily adapt to any situation. The project S.LI.DES fosters cross-border cooperation between cultural destinations in the program area and joint planning of smart strategies to support a more sustainable and balanced territorial development through the promotion of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. S.LI.DES can support destinations to manage tourism more sustainably, by considering how the following elements are affected: mobility patterns, city users’ behaviors, opportunities to experience the destination, business needs. Visitor mobility models can help to better understand how local and non-local city users share public spaces and access to services and attractions, supporting government policies and innovation within tourism destinations. Mapping cultural heritage can help businesses to innovate and improve the visitor experience offer and also become more sustainable. Even though the project S.LI.DES was originally designed to address the problem of over-tourism, some of its features (e.g., management of crowds/people distribution within the city) can also be helpful in these pandemic times.

Coastal city ; visitor flow ; sustainable tourism ; cross-border cooperation ; cultural destination

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