Urban Tourism: A Call to Action
Our strategic agenda Urban Tourism: A Call to Action aims to deepen the understanding of (transformative) urban tourism.
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Based on several co-creation sessions, we came to the following preliminary three themes of ENSUT…
Last month saw Prof. Guido Stompff and me and take the train through the Alps for the latest consortium meeting on the SMARTDEST project in Torino, Italy. Bringing together partners from across Europe and the Mediterranean for the first time since the project began in early 2020. The meeting was an opportunity to compare progress in the City Labs phase of each case study – which includes the establishment of a set of field labs to support citizen engagement, and co-design of service innovation and policy solutions. One of the concluding stages of the research process, City Labs invites identified stakeholders in each city to take part in a participatory process, "aiming at elaborating solutions in the face of social exclusionary processes produced by tourism motilities, scaling up small-scale coping tactics to social and policy innovation" (SMARTDEST, 2022). Centering the lived experience of citizens allows for the collective imagination of, "models that are inclusive, gendered, just, and accomplish a shift towards cities that are more socially resilient in the face of the interventions of tourism mobilities". Each case study has shaped their own engagement process for SMARTDEST - situating the discussion in the local context - ensuring that policies and propositions are bottom-up, human-centred solutions could be sustainable and produce shared value for the whole destination ecosystem.
How can major European cities remain open to the growing flow of visitors while taking into account the living needs of their inhabitants? The SMARTDEST project is looking for answers to this question. The Creative Business research group of Inholland University of Applied Sciences has received more than € 250,000 in funding to contribute to this European research. The Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab is at the forefront of this project.
From 1 to 3 June, the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Rotterdam received an international visit! Representatives of the living labs from Split and Vicenza visited our city as part of the European project SmartCulTour. Within SmartCultour the sustainable development of cultural tourism is central. This development takes place in six European living labs and the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Rotterdam is one of them.