Project facts

Duration: 2024-03-01 - 2027-02-28
Project consortium: UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA, COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL, PROMOTER SRL, BIBRACTE, QENDRA E KERKIMEVE DHE PROMOVIMIT TE PEISAZHEVE HISTORIKOARKEOLOGJIKE SHQIPTARE, EACHTRA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS LIMITED, ARCTUR RACUNALNISKI INZENIRING DOO, EOTVOS LORAND TUDOMANYEGYETEM, UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI, INSTITUTE ID20,INSTITUTE FOR HERITAGE INNOVATIONS
Funding bodies: European Union under the Horizon Europe Programme
Contact: secretour-network@promoter.it
Website: https://secretourproject.eu/

Presentation

SECreTour is a Research and Innovation Action funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Programme.

The project lasts 3 years, starting in March 2024.

Tourism is conceived in SECreTour as a tool to complement and diversify the income of the territories, a way of giving visibility and recognition to rural areas and their inhabitants, and a means to promote the installation and the generation of services that are beneficial both for the local communities and for the visitors. In this light, SECreTour will primarily focus on the local communities’ needs, perceptions and expectations.

Tourism is more than travelling and consuming and it has a great potential for sustainable development when it focuses on culture, nature, knowledge, and experiences. By developing a fair, creative and sustainable tourism approach together with the heritage communities, the SECreTour consortium will assess different local contexts, needs and types of cultural heritage.

Specific goals are taken into account by the project while testing and experimenting with new forms of tourism development, namely: to avoid touristification, to promote alternative business models, to enable governance and citizen engagement not only for touristic-economic planning, but also for community building and cultural heritage management and protection.

Through a series of pilot cases, the project aims to demonstrate how cultural heritage can be used as a real driver for sustainable and fair development, promoting at the same time its conservation. Pilots have been carefully chosen to represent a full range of European territories, communities and heritage, including not only rural and agrarian landscapes, but also memory places of local identities, minorities, and conflictive dark heritage. The pilots represent the focus for every part of the research as they enable the testing of general ideas and observations in local detail and in specific governance contexts, and facilitate effective communication, cooperation and problem-solving through an interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral approach.

Impacts & Results

Four main results are expected to be delivered by the project:

  • Models for social contracts to be established between local communities, local administrations and stakeholders to promote creative cultural tourism in the respect and valuing of local culture.
  • Verification of the models for social contracts in real life environment and preparation for further deployment in these contexts.
  • Policy recommendations, instruments and tools for technical implementations, examples of good practices and success stories, lessons learnt and advice to avoid barriers and threads.
  • A wide and varied range of outputs at pilots scale.
  • A vivid network of common interest composed by the wide range of actors participating in the project and its pilots, as well as other projects and initiatives that care for sustainable tourism development that is respectful of the local communities.

The expected scientific, economic & societal impacts include:

  • A boost of scientific interest into innovative business models within cultural tourism, specifically targeting remote and rural areas (RRA). In particular, SECreTour aims to advance research into the question of whether those local stakeholders who originate the creation of value that attracts visitors also obtain a fair
    share of the value creation caused by cultural tourism; and if not the aim is to find ways to secure this. This goal is directly related to avoiding negative impacts of tourism in these rural and remote areas.
  • Advance the knowledge of the dynamics of consensus and conflicts among local stakeholders when developing alternative business models of cultural and creative tourism in RRA. Conflicts among local stakeholders related to maintenance of the heritage commons are not rare but to advance in the direction of SECreTour’s central aim these conflicts need to be solved or channelled in order to allow for productive collaborations.
  • Valuable contributions to research underpinning a sharper articulation and communication of cultural identities found within RRA in view of limited budgets and need for self-driven organic developments;
  • The emergence of new and more sustainable paths of social, cultural and economic development in the participating HC with possible spin-offs to neighbouring communities or more remote regions facing comparable challenges; notably, tangible outcomes in terms of new job opportunities, income sources, infrastructure, etc.