Leuven, Belgium, 27-28 June 2023

The conference is co-organized by IMPACTOUR, INCULTUM and the other EU H2020 projects operating the area of sustainable tourism promotionolders on the territory.  Selected and presented papers are expected to be published by a Springer book reflecting the breakthroughs and future perspectives of Cultural Tourism.

While exact estimates are difficult to make, it has repeatedly been mentioned that approximately 40% of all European tourists make a destination choice based on the cultural offerings. This leads to significant economic effects and has further strengthened the view of cultural heritage as a strategic resource for its economic impact, but also for its role in creating and enhancing social capital and achieving the goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. At the same time, economic effects have been distributed unequally – often being more prevalent in urbanized areas – and the exponential growth of tourism (notwithstanding the dip during the Covid-19 pandemic) created issues of both over-and underexploitation.

The goal of this Conference is to further understanding of the sustainable development potential of cultural tourism by focusing on successful policy interventions, new cultural tourism trends, advances in visitor management systems, and new business and/or governance models.

Conference website:

https://ees.kuleuven.be/en/culturaltourismconference

The Conference is organized by KU Leuven in collaboration with the European Research Executive Agency and the projects IMPACTOUR, SPOT, TEXTOUR, BE.CULTOUR; SMARTCULTOUR and INCULTUM.