Webinar on cycling tourism

'Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving' (Albert Einstein). Cycling tourism is among the economic sectors that yield most benefits in relation to the public investments that they require to thrive. Cycling as such has multiple benefits, among which the health benefit has been assessed to be the most valuable to society. Cycling tourism, in turn, has the pleasant side-effect of channeling consumer spending to often rural restaurants and hotels. 

In times of COVID-19 pandemic, cycling has gained much drive as an individual and safe means of transport, while the tourism sector has been hit particularly hard by the lock-down.

Bringing cycling and tourism together, the Policy Learning Platform proposes a cross-thematic webinar to explore the multiple benefits of cycling tourism and to hear from successfully good practices from different EU regions how to best support this leisure activity that brings so much added value to regions. Join the webinar on 30 June from 14:00 to 15:30 PM CEST on cycling tourism.

Topics 

The following topics will be tackled during this webinar. 

• Jose Carlos Sanchez Romero and Alain Labatut from the County Council of Huelva, Spain (ECO-CICLE) will present supporting cycling tourism in a coherent way
• Magdalena Osełka from the Tourism Organization of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship will present the cooperation of the Eastern Poland Regions with the promotion of the eastern cycling trail Green Velo
• Ed Lancaster will present the EuroVelo initiative: a cycling tourism map & guide through Europe

Webinar objectives

• Raise awareness among local and regional policy makers about the various benefits of cycling tourism (no emissions, excellent for health, local and regional, etc.)
• Showcase excellent good practices of cycling tourism from selected Interreg Europe project partners
• Highlight the side-effects that make cycling tourism COVID-19 compatible and an excellent public investment
• Enable Interreg Europe projecst and other local policymakers to exchange knowledge and good pratices

Further resources 

Start exploring the topic in this Policy brief on cycling cities and the webinar replay on eco-tourism in riverside areas. 

Image credit: Photo by Snapwire from Pexels