Undoubtedly, Sustainable Tourism is one of the main activities that underpin sustainable development in Protected Areas. Partners from the IMPACT project have collected good practices in order to introduce and promote sustainable tourism in protected areas.

However, with tourism visits in Europe growing at an unprecedented rate, and with nature destinations among the most visited places, we need to empower protected area professionals to manage tourism flows to deliver socio-economic benefits without compromising the conservation status of the destinations. 

  • How to balance the human impact that tourism can bring? 
  • Which methodologies are being used to assess visitors‘ flows and impact? 
  • How to allow managers of the Protected Areas to take strategic decisions and plan effectively tourism?  

The identification of appropriate, cost-effective and low-impact models to manage tourism sustainably, remains an open challenge in many European protected areas.

 

In this webinar, we will listen to some of the INTERREG Central Europe CEETO partners to share some outcomes of their work: we will get to know some of the best – and cost-effective – tools to monitor tourist flows being used by protected areas. After learning the theory, we will get the practice insight, and discover how one of the most visited destinations in Germany is monitoring the impact of their visitors, and using the information collected to make better strategic decisions.

 

Finally, we will have a presentation by the Greek National Park that will host the Charter Network Meeting in April 2019, an international gathering of sustainable tourism experts and technicians from EUROPARC Sustainable Destinations, and hear the challenges they are facing since the Park has tripled its size.

 

Participation is free, but registration is needed!