GOvernance, TOurism and NATURE
The programme area boasts a wide variety of natural (e.g. national parks, landscapes etc.) and cultural as well as historical attractions. Moreover, the project area includes less known places with interesting cultural and natural peculiarities for tourism attractiveness. From a cross-border perspective, initiatives for joint planning and management of tourism are rare, except for few remarkable cases (e.g. Alpine Pearls). The project area needs to develop a vision of the territory as a common economic asset to protect and enhance. Therefore, the project overall objective is to create a model for territorial development based on the sustainable use of less known tourism destinations, their natural and cultural heritage. _x000D_
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To achieve this, the project will: _x000D_
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1) Improve local tourism governance by involving citizens and economic actors in a common concept of tourist destination management. To this aim, a model for tourism governance will be produced. _x000D_
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2) Incorporate the principles of the “European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas” (ECST) into the design of innovative tourism products. To achieve this, the project will first develop a toolkit for sustainable tourism and then apply it to pilot actions. _x000D_
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3) Design a high-quality tourism offer integrating active, wellness, natural & cultural vacation with agro-food production, handcrafts, and folklore. The new products developed with same criteria will be promoted and marketed as one cross-border tourism network.