International Conference on Cultural Tourism Summary

Share

img courtesy: Fundación Santa María la Real’s Twitter

The Conference was co-organized by Be.CULTOUR, IMPACTOUR, INCULTUM, SmartCulTour, SPOT and TEXTOUR, the EU H2020 projects operating the area of sustainable tourism promotion on the territory. Selected and presented papers will be published in 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 was to get a 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.” (via KU Leuven the Conference website).

During the sessions of the second day, a general overview of the outcomes of the six organizing Horizon 2020 projects was given, while good practices based on the finalized and ongoing experimentations in diverse European regions were identified. INCULTUM’s coordinator Jose Maria Martin Civantos presented the project, its achievements and innovations.

 

Conference programme: Cultural Tourism Conference Programme

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


 

Leave a Reply


Related Articles

SECreTOUR Beyond Borders
Beyond Borders is an initiative of the SECreTOUR project, made of three appointments on 23-24-25 October 2025, aiming to explore opportunities, initatives and experiences about sustainable cultural tourism, in the light of challenges and opportunities posed by cross-border actions.   On Thrusday 23/10/2025: Public workshop on Cross-Border Collaboration and Macro-Regions for Cultural Tourism The workshop gathers representatives of the SECreTour consortium, as well as international...
Beyond Borders Hackathon - reusing open access cultural collections for sustainable tourism
As part of a cooperation agreement, EUreka3D initiative is collaborating with SECreTour project to explore how digital cultural heritage can support local promotion and tourism, particularly by reusing open cultural collections to create engaging materials and storytelling about places and communities. Project SECreTour is organizing, together with Photoconsortium, Europeana, UNESCO Chair of the Università della Svizzera Italiana in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in world heri...
SECreTour participation in the REMODEL Summer School
The SECreTOUR project participated in the Summer School organised by the REMODEL project on 16-17 September 2025 in Bursa, Türkiye. The REMODEL Summer School «Innovative Business Solutions for the Food and Beverage Industry» was held at the premises of the Bursa Uludağ University and it was chaired by Prof. Dr. Aylin Poroy Arsoy, Coordinator of the REMODEL project. The lecture of SECreTOUR was delivered by the Networking Manager of the project. The presentation is available here for fr...
Beyond Borders Hackathon: apply now!
SECreTour project, together with Photoconsortium, Europeana, UNESCO Chair of the Università della Svizzera Italiana in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in world heritage sites and UNESCO Chair of the Università di Genova in Anthropology of Health, Biosphere and Healing Systems, is organizing on 25th October 2025 in Lugano a exciting day of creativity and reflections about the role of open access collections in digital storytelling supporting heritage tourism (natural, cultural and ...