Several EU funding programmes provide support to tourism and its stakeholders in their efforts to become greener, digital and more resilient. Now we are living a special momentum with an unprecedented amount of money coming from the Next Generation recovery funds and also the foreseen cohesion funds for the programming period 2021-2027. In this session, we will know how the EU programmes have been used in favour of the sustainable tourism in the past and it will be introduced the Handbook on the use of recovery funds & ERDF for the sustainable tourism produced by the MED Sustainable Tourism Community. There will be an opportunity too to get knowledge about the funding mechanisms for within the new Mediterranean cooperation programme Euro-MED.

The Interreg Euro-MED Academy is the result of the spontaneous collaboration between the eight Thematic Communities and PANORAMED with the support of the Interreg MED Programme’s Joint Secretariat and the coordination of UNIMED – Mediterranean Universities Union as communication lead partner of Sustainable Tourism and Urban Transports Communities.

In this framework, the Sustainable Tourism has recently launched a learning program “#04 Sustainable Tourism and Mobility for the Mediterranean” jointly developed with the Urban Transports community. This program will provide an understanding from theory and real practice of what sustainable tourism is, what challenges destinations sustainability, also deepening on overtourism concept, how destinations are addressing it nowadays, or how they are anticipating to it. Besides, it will also present traditional and innovative practices to ensure sustainable mobility in tourism destinations.

Although major advances have been made in terms of measuring sustainability in tourism, it could be said that there is still a lack of available and harmonised information in a Mediterranean level, especially on a coastal scale, that could provide valuable inputs for planning and management practices and the design of appropriate policies towards a more responsible and sustainable tourism model. The incorporation of quantitative and qualitative data in tourism planning is essential in order to understand coastal territories, set the vision for tourism development and implement tourism strategies at all levels and scales. The methods for measuring tourism sustainability are numerous and usually include the active participation of relevant stakeholders, thus, leading to an integrated approach of coastal and maritime areas.

This panel centres on the benefits that measuring tools can bring to the tourism destinations, specifically in the development and use of sustainable tourism indicators to inform policy. Often indicators have been used to raise awareness about sustainability issues and gain consensus about tourism impacts, but not to promote a better governance or to introduce sustainability as a priority for actual policies. This round table will discuss about how to use tourism sustainability measurements to promote better tourism policies.

The tourism ecosystem is facing several new challenges, from climate change, to the overdemand of tourism and health and safety crises. There is an urgent need to tackle specific issues related to reduce disposable materials and waste, reducing greenhouse emissions, improve water and energy efficiency, or implement new circular economy models. The uptake of already existing tools could be the best opportunity to encourage the tourism ecosystem to properly monitor its activities and improve its environmental performance, as well as to guarantee the development of successful, competitive and resilient destinations and tourism businesses in the future.

This panel centres on specific tools that have been developed by several organisations participating in different European projects and programmes, and will evaluate how the destinations and different tourism stakeholders could adopt these tools that could support the transition towards a more sustainable tourism industry and tourism activities. By exploring how people’s lives have been positively impacted this panel will present the proven solutions that tackle the recurring sustainability problems faced by the Interreg Med destinations. The panellists will share key lessons learned and reflections when considering implementing and scaling the solutions in other destinations across the region.

The Interreg Med Sustainable Tourism Community has welcomed the continuation of a series of projects with the aim to transfer their outputs to more territories of the Mediterranean and beyond. These projects were provided with the opportunity to identify their most concrete outputs, the territories that would be willing to adopt these outputs, the replicability conditions for their adoption, implement them together with the receiving territories in order to incorporate them officially into their operational programmes. The recommendations emerging from the activities of the transferring projects are considered as practices of excellence in terms of transforming ideas, methods and tools into actions that the territories can easily adopt and implement.

This panel centres on the experiences gathered by 6 transferring projects that the Med Sustainable Tourism Community welcomed one year ago and their work during this whole year for the transference of concrete tools and outputs to selected Mediterranean destinations.

Covid-19, despite the impact it has had on the tourism ecosystem, has represented a unique opportunity to rethink the model and reorient it towards sustainability. In this sense, different initiatives have emerged that formulate proposals to regenerate tourism through a socially equitable, environmentally respectful, and economically sustainable model. But, now that recovery is in sight: what have we learned from the pandemic? Has it served to speed up certain processes? What trends will remain over time? Jointly with The Future of Tourism Coalition we will know what the proposals for the tourism of the future are. Also what is the vision of the private sector on the recovery of tourism and from the natural areas that have been one of the great destinations of proximity tourism in the last two years.

This panel involves three approaches to the impacts that the covid have generated on tourism in the last 2 years: the economic approach, the environmental approach and the social and cultural one. The focus will be more on the recovery process than how deep has been the impact. It will try to debate among the main streamlines are on the table to become the tourism models more resilient, sustainable and equitable.

The MED Sustainable Tourism Community has advanced in many fronts, there is a good base of knowledge. However, there is still a lot to be done, specially we still need to act, so that our destinations and tourism businesses are resilient and develop tourism in a sustainable way for our common future. This talk will question and propose actions, let's be brave to act!