Integration of regional/local policies for Sustainable Mobility, Accessibility & low-carbon Responsible Travel, with policies for efficient sustainable tourism towards a low-carbon economy, requires particular attention in the EU. This is a common challenge that public regional/local and transport authorities increasingly face, particularly at busy destinations with high tourism travel flows (inc. in South Europe, coastal, maritime & insular, mass tourism destinations). Immediate action is needed through interregional cooperation to capitalise best practices, improve policy instruments & prepare action plans with implementation monitoring & evaluation.
The DESTI-SMART project, addresses the above towards 'Smart Destinations', for sustainable & responsible tourism development in Europe, with low-carbon,
multimodal sustainable mobility & accessibility.
The overall objective is to improve the transport and tourism policies of EU destinations, by integrating strategies for sustainable mobility, accessibility and responsible travel with efficient & sustainable tourism development, for transition to a low-carbon economy, through efficiency, resilience, multimodality, novel low-carbon transport systems, cycling & walking, with implementation innovations, policy learning and capacity building.
The following pressing issues are addressed:
- Investments in low-carbon transport systems for mode shift to sustainable tourism mobility, incl. Electro-Mobility
- Intermodality facilities for visitors, including ICT, Mobile Aps & MaaS
- Accessible tourism for all
- Cycling & Walking facilities & promotion for visitors.
Main outputs:
- policy learning & capacity building for public authorities & their stakeholders
- improved policy instruments & action plans in 9 destinations, with close involvement of stakeholders
- advances in EU2020 objectives
- communication & dissemination learning materials.
DESTI-SMART Interreg Europe project is the result of an initiative since 2015 that has established a wider informal network of tourist destinations, regional/local authorities and tourism boards in 15 countries, towards ‘smart destinations’. The DESTI-SMART network was presented at the ECOMM Conference in Athens, Greece, in June 2016 and at the ‘Visitor Economy’ Conference in Bournemouth, UK, in September 2017.
