Area, Access, Accommodation, Attractions, Awareness and Activation are the six A's for the energy efficiency, protection of natural resources and environmentally friendly measures towards a more Sustainable Tourism which Ms Anya Niewierra - Director of South Limburg Tourism Board - presented at the 16th European Forum in Tallin.

Per each of that six A's Ms Niewierra presented some good practices from South Limburg (in the Netherlands) and other NECSTouR member Regions.

MITOMED+ Project has been presented for instance as a concrete example on how NECSTouR members are preventing the climate changes, establishing a set of indicators to monitor and manage tourism in the Mediterranean area and establishing a green beach model for the Mediterranean tourism destinations.

Also the examples of Hiking Europe and NEZeh Project has been presented, together with the initiative "Welcome to the farm" by Catalonia, the use of the EU Ecolabel by several NECSTouR member Regions and the Västra Götaland Maritime Cluster.

Several examples from the only hilly area of the Netherlands have been presented as well, such as building new attractions on former coal mine sites, offering a Tourist Bus Ticket with reduction on the entrance to attractions, vitality scan for hotels and bungalow parks with action plan, retail and distribution of regional agricultural products, communicating sustainability in every phase of the decision making process of the guest, link with other sustainable initiatives and offering good ranking positions to those SME's who perform sustainable.

The presentation ended with some useful lessons learnt in South Limburg:

• To become sustainable as a tourist destination it is important to be active in all the six A's and not just in a couple of them.
• Communication to SMEs should be easy to be understood
• Green ambition from the political leaders is fundamental to take unpopular measures that often go with sustainable tourism
• A quick first success is key to create pride and to get SME's to walk the green road.

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The European Tourism Forum 2017 has been organised by the European Commission and the Estonian Presidency of the EU in Tallin the 18th and 19th of October.
This year, the Forum has been dedicated to an exchange of views with Public Authorities at EU, national and regional level, European associations and international organisations, with representatives of the industry and other stakeholders on the following topics of importance:

•          Innovation in tourism for sustainable growth
•          Transport connectivity and intermodality as critical success factors for the European tourism sector
•          Energy efficiency, protection of natural resources and environmentally friendly measures towards more sustainable EU tourism
•          Balance between security and seamless travel in Europe.

Mr Taleb Rifai, UNWTO Secretary General, was attending that event as well.