Workshop 7: Sustainability and attractiveness of Mediterranean tourism: best practices and innovation projects in the Euro-Mediterranean coastal countries

Conclusions

Valorize the under-water heritage for promoting opportunities of cultural tourism development and the conservation of marine biodiversity through i) mechanisms able to operationalize the 2001 UNESCO Convention on Underwater Heritage; ii) enforcement of UNESCO underwater sites network; iii) a coherent connection among the underwater heritage with the costal and maritime tourism offer;

Modernize marinas for a better sustainable accessible offer through i) private-public partnerships and cluster initiatives for the improvement of IT facilities able to adapt tourism offer to the changing tourist profile; ii) development of infrastructures integrating emerging technologies for providing higher added value services; iii) promotion of advanced services by exploiting new technologies and systems (e.g. IT infrastructures and protocols, Satellite communications, Cloud services and Big Data analytics, Mobile services);
Address tourism pressures in the Mediterranean region by integrating analysis of threats and enabling factors for sustainable tourism and improving IT facilities for the marine environmental monitoring;
Strengthen analysis, planning, and management practices as well as toolkits and cross sectors cooperation towards a sustainable tourism at Mediterranean level;
Build a strong community of projects and stakeholders, and promote interaction among existing communities of stakeholders in order to optimize capitalization on existing project and experiences ensuring the transferring of results to other EU MED territories;
Take into account complementarities among financial instruments in order to support capitalization of flagship projects and initiatives at a wider Mediterranean scale;
Valorize the specificities of Mediterranean territories in order to promote a sustainable replication of flagship initiatives among the different Mediterranean areas.