A two-days workshop entitled “Building Sustainable Coastal and Maritime Tourism Policies for Mediterranean Destinations” has been organised in Malaga on the 5 and 6 April 2018

Debate on Indicators. It has been a unique occasion to debate on the use of Indicators to measure Sustainable Tourism Policies in the Mediterranean with some of the main European experts in that field.

The framework. The event has been organised in the framework of the MITOMED+ Project and the NECSTouR Working Group on Indicators

DAY ONE - Learning how to Measure Sustainability in Coastal and Maritime Tourism Destination

MITOMED+ Project (Model of Integrated Tourism in the Mediterranean) has been presented by some of its partners as a coherent system of Indicators to measure the coastal and maritime tourism destination’s sustainability.

Maximising the use of Existing Information. A whole roundtable has been dedicated to the instruments available to manage a European tourist destination in a sustainable manner. Experts shared the available indicator systems and how they can contribute to destination management, how indicators can be adjusted to the various territorial realities, the main challenges in calculating indicators, and the stakeholder’s collaboration in the collection / transfer of the necessary data.

Use of Indicators for policy Making. A second roundtable presented how a European tourist destination can use indicators to inform decision-making. Difficulties in the use of sustainability data for tourism management has been deeply analysed, as well as the changes that destination management organisations have made to optimize the management of sustainability in the destinations.
Destination experts shared also what tourism sustainability measures have been applied thanks to the use of indicators, how they have monitored the effectiveness of the measures undertaken to improve sustainability at their destination, and the aspects of their destination that were improved thanks to use of indicators.

Video summary of Day One

DAY TWO - JOINT SOLUTIONS FOR COMMON CHALLENGES INTO ONE ROADMAP

How to introduce sustainable tourism indicators. A parallel working group provided more practical examples and space for discussion about the instruments available to manage tourist destination in a sustainable manner. Cost-effectively use current sources of data, and how to complement it with new information sources has been jointly identified as well.

How to use sustainable tourism indicators for Policy-Making. A second parallel working group got more practical examples about how tourist destination can use indicators to inform decision-making. Specific methods to convince politicians and destination representatives to take better policy decisions based on sustainability indicators have been identified together.

A Roadmap for Sustainable Tourism Indicators will be produced with the results of all the discussion and will be released to the workshop participants, the members of NECSTouR and the European and International Institutions dealing with the use of Tourism Indicators for policy-making.

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