Sustainable Polycentric Tourism

Project summary

The Atlantic Area program promotes the development of coastal regions, including their hinterland, with the aim of achieving territorial cohesion.
Tourism is a sector that must transform the territory's resources into a sustainable economic activity, avoiding the negative effects of inadequate management: pressure on the territory or deterioration of heritage.
The project will develop and test the concept of "Polycentric Tourism"; an innovative approach that seeks to redistribute tourism in inland territories through measures that favor the permeability of tourist flows.
The partners, in coordination with the sector, will develop both the concept and its application and communication tools in order to implement the concept of "Polycentric Tourism" over the duration of the project. Thus, the partners will implement 4 Action Plans as pilots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the concept and the tools created. These plans will also be a guide for transferring the experience to other interested regions.

General aim of the project

The overall aim of this project is to identify and develop a strategy for a sustainable tourism sector in the Atlantic Area, with particular emphasis on sharing and balancing the distribution of tourist flows with a twofold objective: to promote tourism within the Atlantic Area and to help relieve tourist pressure in the most affected areas (including acting on dispersed tourist pressure from overcrowded tourist sites to lesser-known locations).

In this context, the project aims to:

• Promoting greater coastal/inland cohesion encouraging a more balanced distribution of tourist flows in the Atlantic Area.
• Focus on the benefits of changing consumer preferences
• after Covid-19 to less crowded destinations.
• Addressing the negative impact of mass tourismThis will reduce their intensity in the most popular destinations in the Atlantic Area (reducing the pressure that these places are already suffering or may suffer in the near future).
• Establishing a polycentric strategy for sustainable tourism which enables the sharing of resources, involves the entire tourism ecosystem and promotes innovation throughout the Atlantic Area.