Empowering Micro Destinations for Sustainable Tourism

"<< Background >>Micro destination development is closely related to the fields of destination development through who is involved, but in the processes it's closer to placemaking. Micro destinations, which are smaller and less well-known destinations, often have unique cultural, natural, and historical assets that can attract visitors. These attractions are not limited to sites, and can include intangible assets such as traditional festivals, local cuisine, biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, heritage sites, and storytelling. These assets can be used to develop sustainable tourism strategies that preserve local identity and heritage while ensuring economic benefits for local communities. However, these destinations are also vulnerable to the negative impacts of tourism, such as hyper-seasonality, swings between over- and under-tourism, environmental degradation, and cultural commodification. Additionally, regions and municipalities struggle when it comes to streamlining methods for managing the developing clusters of micro destinations and retaining competence on micro destination development. With this project we wanted to find solutions and methods to work actively with these challenges and special needs. << Objectives >>The general objective of the project was to contribuite to the development of knowledge sharing and capacity building among tourism stakeholders across Europe. Specific objectives were:- promote the implementation of sustainable tourism strategies in micro destinations that benefit both visitors and local communities.- increase the understanding and skills related to sustainable micro-destination development for policy makers and planners. These skills include cross disciplinary understanding of the impacts on sustainable tourism in the micro destination as a whole from decision and policies made in its parts.- increase the awareness of community based approaches for placemaking and micro destination development, an area where the knowledge and research from academia seldom meets reality.<< Implementation >>Two main activities were implemented in the project: Collection of good practices for sustainablemicro destination development and a seminar called ""Sustainable and responsible tourism: promoting microdestinations"". The first activity focused on benchmarking best practices across four countries in the EU for the sustainable development of established and emerging micro destinations and collect the good practices identified that are most suitable for transferability in a handbook that includes guidelines and methods. The Croatian Kvarner Region led the collection of good practices supported by the Expert partner Svedest on how to collect good practices and producing templates for the complete collection. Halland region, SIA Liepaja and Kvarner Region held local workshops with key stakeholders to identify good practices to present. SERN held a local workshop with the assisting partner Municipality of Borgotaro, Italy. The workshop formats was digital or physical, depending on the destination's situation. The second activity was a 3-day transnational Seminar organized in Sweden by the project coordinator with the support of the Swedish partner SveDest and focused on the empowerment of tourism micro-destinations. << Results >>The project produced 3 concrete outputs:1. A framework of good practices for the sustainable development of established and emerging micro destinations that includes guidelines and methods that can be applied by regions and municipalities to develop and manage micro destinations in a more sustainable and resilient way. The format of this output is a handbook containing examples and best practice from different destinations in Europe. 2. Increased awareness and adoption of sustainable tourism practices among tourism stakeholders, including tourism organisations, community members, municipalities, local government, and other public partners. Thanks to the project we managed to put the finger on challanges many micro destinations face. This in turn resulted in possible working methods for sustainable and resilient micro destinations that benefit both the sustainable growth of local communities and responsible visitors.3. Thanks to the project we strengthened the networks and partnerships between tourism stakeholders across Europe, enabling them to learn from each other and share good practices. This will in turn strengthen the capacity of regions and municipalities to develop sustainable and resilient tourism micro-destinations."