The Kick-off Meeting of the TOURISMO project

The Kick-off Meeting of the TOURISMO project took place on 20 and 21 February in Rhodes, Greece.

This new European project, financed by the Interreg Euro-MED programme, is linked to the ever-present theme of sustainable tourism. It involves the participation of 10 partners from 7 countries in the Mediterranean area and beyond (from east to west: Cyprus, Greece , Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Malta, Spain).

The idea of working on open data and big data to test methodologies and measurements of data linked to tourist flows was taken from Herit-Data project.

Unlike Herit Data, this time there are 7 pilot areas, all included in the 7 countries mentioned above; 5 of the pilot areas involve tourist destinations different from those in the previous project.

The meeting in Rhodes, a nice opportunity to meet Herit Data partners again and to introduce ourselves to the new ones, opened with welcome greetings from the project leader, the Development Agency of the Southern Aegean Region, READ S.A.

After a targeted introduction to the work that would take place during the two-day meeting and the description of the project structure and future activities, space was left for the presentations of the partners of the pilot areas: objectives, expected results, state of the art of each destination in the field of collection and monitoring of certain types of data, which will be used to support local decision-makers and stakeholders in the management of tourist flows.

The second day was dedicated to visiting the pilot area of Rhodes and defining the activities that are about to be started in the various WPs, also providing administrative/reporting information and general notes to align all partners on the tools to be used within this program.

The next project meeting is scheduled for around October in another pilot area, the city of Varna, Bulgaria.

For further information on the project, please contact chiara.guiggiani@unifi.it