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Multidimensional model of tourism verticals driving the sustainable balanced growth among rural & remote grids and urban clusters of rural regions, fostering macro-regional cooperation

Project description

Modelling the future of cultural tourism in rural regions

Europe’s rural and remote regions largely rely on farming and forestry. Their inaccessibility has enabled them to maintain an extraordinary wealth of natural beauty and cultural heritage. The EU-funded TOURAL project intends to boost tourism in such areas through a modelling approach that will enable multidimensional, multi-destination tourism for sustainable development. The ‘dimensions’ analysed will be cultural heritage tourism, natural heritage tourism, creative cultural tourism (for example, culinary classes or other learning experiences), cultural science tourism and silver tourism (for those over 50). The model will also capture augmentation of impact in each sector via regional tourism cooperation and integrated local value chains.

Objective

EU rural and remote areas demonstrate a wide range of qualities, while facing a unique set of challenges. To this end, EC put forward a “Long Term Vision for Rural Areas”, identifying specific challenges and opportunities, and proposing a Rural Action Plan. A major challenge is the diversification of economic activities beyond the traditional agriculture-farming-forestry sectors, as enabler for stimulating economic growth. Evidently, tourism could become an anchor for economic development of rural and remote areas. Motivated from the above considerations, TOURAL will focus on cultural & creative tourism as drivers for sustainable development, paying at the same time a premium to the EC Tourism Transition Pathway requirements, within the context of smart multi-destination and multi-dimensional tourism offerings empowered by macro-regional tourism cooperation and integrated local value-chains. TOURAL proposes a model to support the touristic development of participating rural regions, balancing the growth of their urban clusters with the untapped growth potential of their remote and rural grid cells. Our modelling approach will be multi-dimensional in terms of addressing complementary tourism verticals/niche sectors (underwater cultural & nature heritage tourism, cultural & creative tourism, cultural science tourism, silver tourism); participatory in terms of co-designing policy pathways and tourism offerings/services, co-creating business models and tourism products, and co-validating small-scale tourism services implementations; and integrated in terms of joint planning and business development with integrated value-chains, policymaking and cross-border cooperation, at macro-regions level. Our scope of interventions includes 3 regions from the Adriatic-Ionian macro-region (Italy, Croatia, Greece), and 3 regions from the Black Sea Basin (Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine).

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01

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Coordinator

ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 514 750,00
Address
CHARILAOU THERMI ROAD 6 KM
57 001 THERMI THESSALONIKI
Greece

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Region
Βόρεια Ελλάδα Κεντρική Μακεδονία Θεσσαλονίκη
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 514 750,00

Participants (19)

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