Tourism is an essential driver of economic growth, employment, as well as social and cultural exchange in the Mediterranean. While challenges such as over-tourism and climate change exists, sustainable tourism models can ensure long-term benefits for both visitors and local communities.

Consequently, the monitoring of the tourism sector is essential to ensure its sustainability. Developing and using sustainable tourism indicators is essential for ensuring that the Mediterranean remains a thriving, yet responsible travel destination.

Objectives
This webinar aims to underscore the critical role of reliable and robust indicators in advancing sustainable tourism. The development of such data serves as a fundamental management and monitoring tool, supporting Mediterranean destinations to adopt a sustainable approach to destination management. The use of indicators is also important to monitor key policy issues and assist in the prioritization of actions towards sustainable development.

The scope of the event is to:

1. Highlight the role of indicators in terms of how well-defined and measurable indicators contribute to effective tourism planning, monitoring, and policy development, ensuring a balance between economic growth, environmental protection as well as social well-being.
2. Explore methodological approaches through showcasing best practices and methodologies for designing and implementing sustainable tourism indicators, ensuring that they are practical, comparable, and policy relevant as well as transferable in a manner to allow more Mediterranean countries to participate in the collection of such data.

The webinar will highlight the importance of sustainable tourism observatories and seek to highlight the significance of harmonized approaches among Mediterranean countries to ensure data comparability and cross-border collaboration within the Westmed community. The webinar will allow for discussion amongst experts, policymakers, tourism operators, and researchers to exchange insights, share challenges, and explore strategies for enhancing the sustainability and competitiveness of the region’s tourism sector.

This webinar will serve as a practical and policy-oriented discussion on sustainable tourism fostering collaboration between the WestMED countries. It is being organized by the WestMED Technical Group on Sustainable Tourism which has been developed to serve as a forum to discuss trends and opportunities for sustainable tourism in the WestMED area. The discussions of this webinar can serve to inform the upcoming EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy.

Language: EN
When: 2 April 2025 | 10:00-13:00
Where: Online (registration required)