The tourism industry has long focused predominantly on growth, often without fully considering the long-term impacts on destinations and local communities. As a result, persistent challenges such as overtourism, congestion and increasing pressure on natural and cultural assets continue to affect territories across the Mediterranean basin.

Turning towards more conscious, resilient and sustainable tourism, TOURISMO recognises that this transition requires harnessing innovation, strengthening cooperation among stakeholders from different ecosystems, improving the visitor experience and actively engaging end users.

TOURISMO addresses these challenges through innovative technologies, data-driven methodologies and new services for monitoring and managing tourist flows. Building on the foundations laid by its predecessor HERIT-DATA, the project has developed and tested new approaches in destinations experiencing different forms of tourism pressure.

During its first phase, TOURISMO implemented and validated its approach across 8 MED pilot sites in Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Croatia and Malta, covering a wide variety of destination profiles, including UNESCO areas, ports, city centres, beaches, cultural heritage sites and protected natural areas. The experience gained through these pilots has been consolidated into the “Toolkit for informed decisions & actions for the management of tourism flows in destinations”, providing practical guidance on stakeholder engagement, tourism flow analysis, indicators, data collection, monitoring technologies and decision-support tools.

Building on these results, TOURISMO has now entered its Transfer Phase, extending its partnership and geographical reach across 10 European countries and focusing on the transfer, adaptation and future uptake of the TOURISMO approach in 3 new receiving territories: Krupa na Vrbasu in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aspres–Thuir in France and Vila Franca de Xira in Portugal. Through needs analysis, stakeholder mobilisation, technical adaptation, capacity building and investment-readiness activities, each territory will adapt the Toolkit to its own tourism challenges, capacities and governance context.

The project continues to involve a broad range of stakeholders across the tourism value chain, including public authorities, destination management organisations, development agencies, scientific and innovation organisations, solution providers, NGOs and tourism SMEs. Through this transfer process, TOURISMO aims to strengthen the mainstreaming, transferability and long-term sustainability of smart, balanced and data-driven tourism management solutions across the Euro-MED area.

Persistent challenges, like overtourism, congestion and increasing pressure on natural and cultural assets, continue to affect destinations and communities across the Mediterranean region. TOURISMO addresses these challenges through innovative technologies, data-driven methodologies and decision-support tools that help destinations monitor, understand and manage tourist flows more effectively.

Building on the solutions tested in 8 MED pilot sites, the TOURISMO approach is now being transferred to 3 new receiving territories in Bosnia and Herzegovina, France and Portugal, where it will be adapted to different tourism contexts through needs analysis, stakeholder mobilisation, technical adaptation, capacity building and investment-readiness activities, supporting the wider uptake of smart, sustainable and data-driven tourism management solutions across the Euro-MED area.