If you are curious to know more about how destinations are transforming the tourism industry and local value chains to adapt to the types of visitors they target and their expectations while achieving an active involvement of local communities, this article is for you!
Sustainable tourism in protected areas is actually a good business! It stimulates local economies by sharing incomes and creating new job opportunities and combines all this with the essential conservation objective of fragile natural areas. How is it possible? By creating multi-day sustainable ecotourism experiences that minimise the negative environmental and social consequences while influencing tourists to be more aware while travelling.
Travellers are currently shifting their travel behaviours and are now looking for authentic experiences that give them the opportunity to be deeply involved in the destination, its nature, people and culture.
“Before, tourists who visited our island mostly looked forward to the sea, sunbathing and relaxing, and rarely wanted alternative activities, nature walks and so on. But this is changing. Now we are visited by tourists who want to stay in nature and stay longer” - Tihana Dakić-Barichievich, ASL Tourism Agency (Veli Lošinj, Croatia)
DestiMED Plus project supports destinations so that they can follow this new (and important) path. Using the MEET Model for ecotourism development, it helps local operators to create and design the ecotourism package in a strict collaboration with the protected area and thus contributing to the transformation of local tourism value chains. And this is a vicious circle: supporting nature-based tourism encourages the conservation work of protected areas and therefore targets tourists’ expectations in destinations.
Many tourism operators have started to build new sustainable products and they have already seen the positive impacts they are generating in terms of tourist satisfaction and local benefits.
“Working with the project has made us more conscientious in our approach to tourism (...) and has raised our awareness about being more environmentally friendly. Tourists are definitely becoming more aware (...) and our products reflect this. Prior to the project we had a well established process to build on to be sustainable. Now, we work with the park, developing products in a collaborative way” - Giovanni Scarpa, Biking Sardinia
Porto Conte Regional Park © Fondas Spinthakis
But wait… we do not want to reveal everything! Have a look at the full story here!
Get involved in this transformation and help us to support our ecotourism experiences in Mediterranean protected areas. You will be offering conservation-focused, high-quality experiences that differ from what you’ll find anywhere else. Discover more here!
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