CYCLING WATERWAYS

Tourism has been a growing industry in Europe in the last decades till 2020. Numerous cities were suffering from too many visitors what resulted in problems regarding support (of inhabitants) and carrying capacity of the destination. And then COVID-19 changed the world! Tourism collapsed completely. Now, after 2 years of the pandemic, cities and regions need to develop new strategies to ‘rebuild tourism’. Cities where (again) there is overtourism (regularly or permanently) are facing an extra challenge: to find a good balance between visitors, communities and environment. Six cities and regions (Amsterdam-NL, Krakow-PL, Tallinn-EST, Andalucia/Sevilla-E, Rome-IT and Brasov-RO) that (regularly) experience over-tourism have joined forces how to develop new policy strategies to better distribute tourism in time and space. They are supported and guided by an experienced knowledge partner in the field of tourism research (Breda University of Applied Sciences-NL). The objective of the project is to improve the performence of the local-regional strategies and policies by strenghtening their contribution to find balance in tourism with a focus on spreading tourism over a wider area, making use of the opportunities offered by the city and region. The project aims to strengthen the positive effects of tourism and to reduce the negative effects of tourism. Together the partners have identified 6 strategic topics they address to improve their policy instruments. The 6 topics are: destination development and management, data management, sustainable mobility and accessibility, influencing behaviour, marketing & promotion and SME and citizen involvement. In order to achieve the policy improvements the partners jointly will evaluate the effectiveness of the current Policy Instruments and interventions, exchange best practices, experiences and knowledge, develop, implement and monitor Policy improvements and disseminate the results to a wider audience.