The convention tackled the significance of harnessing the ability of tradition and native values to redefine the customer expertise. As one of many companions throughout the SmartCulTour consortium, UNESCO performed a key position in designing the contents and format of the convention, the place it moderated and chaired two periods. The primary UNESCO-led session, beneath the title “Tradition and tourism – An built-in strategy to complement the customer expertise”, targeted on how cultural tourism can develop into extra aggressive with a larger give attention to innovation and creativity in product growth and advertising. The panellists notably explored:

• How partnerships between tourism companies and native communities can create extra significant and genuine experiences for guests;
• How heritage interpretation is turning into a robust software to interact guests and create a deeper reference to the native tradition;
• How sustainable tourism practices have gotten more and more vital to guests, and the way companies can undertake sustainable practices to draw and retain aware guests;
• How guests are more and more in search of genuine cultural experiences, what “genuine” means on this context, and the way locations can present higher alternatives for a sustainable cultural tourism immersion within the native supply.

The second UNESCO-led session, “Participatory decision-making approaches in cultural tourism policy-making”, aimed to offer tourism professionals with insights into the right way to contain native communities and stakeholders in tourism analysis and coverage growth, and the right way to empower them to take part in decision-making processes. Panellist shared experiences of engagement from the SmartCulTour Residing Labs, heritage communities and teams, in addition to instruments and strategies to stimulate interplay and lively involvement.

The road-up of audio system included specialists from the European Union (EU), the United Nations Academic, Scientific and Cultural Group (UNESCO), the Worldwide Council on Monuments and Websites (ICOMOS), universities, cultural organisations, the tourism enterprise sector and representatives from SmartCulTour and different European initiatives at present engaged on cultural tourism.

Since its launch in January 2020, the SmartCulTour venture has supported the event of European areas by offering them with a set of instruments and methods to interact with stakeholders and co-create sustainable cultural tourism practices.

The venture has been deployed by way of 6 Residing Labs throughout Europe (Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain). The venture’s instruments and the completely different experiences of the SmartCulTour Residing Labs with key goal audiences had been shared throughout the Last Convention.