CHRISTA

Cultural and natural heritage is very important at all levels, local, regional, national and European, consisting of several dimensions that can lead to resource efficiency, through deployment for sustainable and responsible tourism development with innovative character. Policies for heritage applications to eco-cultural tourism need to be further developed, implemented and monitored, through interregional cooperation. The common challenges that are jointly tackled in the CHRISTA project are:

• natural & Cultural Heritage assets are valuable treasures, sometimes in danger and in need of proper conservation, preservation and/or restoration,
• these assets can be deployed for the purposes of sustainable and responsible tourism development, namely cultural tourism, heritage tourism and ecotourism,
• the tourism potential of these assets may facilitate the preservation and restoration efforts, if performed in a sustainable and responsible way,
• innovation can contribute greatly towards improving cultural and natural heritage policies for sustainable and responsible tourism development.

The overall objective is to protect and preserve natural and cultural heritage assets and deploy them for the development and promotion of innovative, sustainable and responsible tourism strategies, including intangible and industrial heritage, through interpretation and digitisation, with capitalisation of good practices, policy learning, policy implementation and capacity building. Expected changes are in terms of improved policy instruments in destination regions, advances in relevant policy implementation, upgrading of cultural and natural assets and innovative applications. Main outputs are Action Plans, with implementation and monitoring of improved policy instruments in 9 regions, communication and dissemination tools for policy learning and capacity building, contribution to EU policies and EU2020 targets. The beneficiaries are public authorities and their stakeholders.