IMPACTOUR ambition is driven by five overarching strategic expected impacts, as follows:
1. Improve policies and practices on cultural tourism at various levels;
2. Provide strategic guidance at European level concerning the efficient use of European Structural Investment Funds;
3. Contribute to the establishment of partnerships between public and private stakeholders;
4. Creation of innovative quantitative/statistical as well as qualitative tools and methods;
5. New methods will improve available data on and understanding of the impact of cultural tourism on European economic and social development and on cultural Europeanisation.
During this first reporting period (eighteen months), IMPACTOUR partners have been working to progress beyond the state of the art and reach the aforementioned five expected impacts. The project has been built around a set of innovative Scientific and Technical Objectives that will be pursued in deep correlation with a set of Socio-Economic Objectives leading to long term Exploitation objectives. The lack of Cultural Tourism indicators led the consortium to establish a first set of 144 indicators that were reduced to a manageable list of 51 indicators, clustered under six domains: Characterisation, Resilience, Environmental, Social, Economic and Cultural. Besides carrying out this groundwork, IMPACTOUR partners progressed beyond state of the art in exploring innovative tools for tourism and Cultural Tourism impact assessment, information tools for cultural tourism destinations with focus on accessibility and mitigation strategies for COVID-19. This work led to the publication of three scientific publications.
The IMPACTOUR methodology will be established with the high engagement and cooperation of distinct stakeholders, coming from currently 30 pilots around Europe. This set of pilots assures a good and equitable coverage of a wide diversity of cultural tourism destinations across Europe, including tourist routes, urban and rural sites, industrial and natural heritage, intangible heritage, creative industries, arts and crafts, digital collections and many other CT assets.
The IMPACTOUR tool will be developed using open standards and a modular design based on the Privacy by Design principle of GDPR, driven by a participatory and inclusive approach which aims to act as a catalyst for enhancing the establishment of a sustainable ecosystem by engaging a wide range of Cultural Tourism stakeholders.