Social Innovation and TEchnologies for sustainable growth through participative cultural TOURism

Project Information

TExTOUR

Grant agreement ID: 101004687

DOI

10.3030/101004687

Project closed

EC signature date 11 November 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 30 September 2024

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 950 468,75

EU contribution

€ 3 816 125,00

Coordinated by

FUNDACION SANTA MARIA LA REAL DEL PATRIMONIO HISTORICO
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - TExTOUR (Social Innovation and TEchnologies for sustainable growth through participative cultural TOURism)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Cultural Tourism (CT) plays a crucial role in today’s economies, representing about 37% of the total tourism sector, with an annual growth of around 15%. This role and impact on the economy can be capitalized by certain regions and sites of EU and beyond having a high cultural, social and environmental potential. This impact does not only depend exclusively on the existence of historical-picturesque heritage, but is also related to other synergistic factors such as know-how, ICTs, gastronomy, identity, local culture, values, intangible heritage or other singularities.
TExTOUR mobilizes 18 partners, represented in the quintuple social innovation helix (knowledge, business, society, government and entrepreneurs) to co-design, validate and upscale to various levels, policies and strategies with positive impact on the socio-economic territorial development based on cultural tourism.
TExTOUR uses ICTs and social innovation tools to work with 8 Cultural Tourism Pilots in less known areas to conceive and design collaborative work methodologies for the development of CT strategies for their sites. Each pilot sets up Labs Communities, composed of a wide range of stakeholders with a relevant role in the development of CT sector. The stakeholders are guided through the Cultural Tourism-Labs for the implementation, monitoring and validation of the CT ad hoc strategies. The project develops procedures services and tools and carries out activities, proposed in the methodology. Their results are used to prepare a modular and scalable EU Action Plan for Cultural Tourism Development. In parallel, a technological platform is designed and tested to assess CT policies and strategies envisaged by public and private stakeholders. It provides data analytics as a service, together with a catalogue of relevant services representing the assessed CT strategies, and proper content curation and validation processes, apart from assessing the implemented practices and its related impacts.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the period covering PR1, we began our journey into this unique project developing several works thanks to the efforts of our multicultural consortium of 18 partners. The kick-off meeting we held was as special as the exceptional moments we experienced as a partnership, forcing us to get to know each other virtually. This fact, far from limiting us, has encouraged us to move forward with a firm step in our purpose of helping unique places, enhancing their resources, and the communities that are part of them. We fruitfully exploited our experience from other European projects, applying this knowledge to our pilots scenarios, also planning an evaluation and measurement system that will allow us to know the impact of the implemented actions. The use of ICT’s is fundamental for us: it is the technology that will highlight the strategic lines and measurements we are working on. We have an exciting road ahead of us: the challenge of strengthen the European identity through an organic and coordinated strategy.

During the PR2 period, the innovative methodology to engage stakeholders in defining strategies and actions to be implemented as part of the TExTOUR project was developed and put in place. CT-Labs starting narrowing their options given the time and budget constraints. In 2023, we started with the planning of the implementation of CT-Labs Actions leading to the first monitoring which will happen after the summer. During the period, the ICT platform started to be developed with the different offerings that will be used long-term. Exploitation and upscaling process was launched by defining long-term business plans for each of the CT-Labs Actions and the recruiting of additioinal Pilots. Close monitoring of overall activities tood place in the form of presencial / online meetings either with the whole Consortium attendance or also bi-lateral or small group meetings according to the specific topics to be handled.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The benefits and impacts pursued by TExTOUR are:
Identify and activate ways to create a European tourism offer based on tangible and intangible cultural heritage as a competitive factor in order to attract new forms of sustainable tourism.
Explore how traditional and non-traditional resources, including digitisation of cultural content and digital services can foster the expansion of trans-European tourism networks and further the development of itineraries, including small emerging destinations, also taking into account contemporary arts activities, festivals and cultural events.
In recent years, we could see a continuous process of de-industrialization in many European regions, accompanied by an increasing development of other sectors. In this economic transition, a leading role is played by tourism with a growth in the fields of cultural consumption, heritage conservation and the relationship with the creative economy.
The overall project objective is to test and validate replicable modular strategies and tools for the development of less known, remote or peripheral areas based on their cultural tourism potential. The design of the strategy applies social innovation criteria in all the co-creation processes, ensuring the engagement of all related cultural tourism stakeholders. TExTOUR identifies 8 Cultural Tourism Pilots as replicable challenged areas where Cultural Tourism Labs (CT-Labs) will be set up to test and validate the envisaged strategies and tools for cultural tourism development. Special attention will be payed to bottlenecks and barriers that prevent the development of certain regions with high cultural, social and environmental values. A wide group of Knowledge Key Partners (10) will work very closely with 8 full project partners, as they are responsible for the pilots leading the change and supported by local and regional stakeholders (CT Labs Community).
The project will integrate available data and generated knowledge to support policymakers and practitioners in defining sustainable Cultural Tourism strategies. This will increase of Europeanisation of Cultural Tourism in remote in forgotten areas and create an inclusive and modern European identity based on a network of local identities.

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