Conclusions of the Tourism Eco Forum 2018
- The Tourism Eco-Forum 2018 took place the past May 24 at the Media-Tic Building in Barcelona. It was attended by more than 50 experts and practitioners from 10 European cities and other key international stakeholders like OECD.
- This event focused environmental and social sustainability issues related to European urban tourism such as mass-tourism, gentrification, jobs quality and stakeholders‘ participation.
- During the workshop the study “Urban Tourism Sustainability in European Cities” on innovative policies for sustainable urban tourism was presented and discussed.
- It was co-organized by eco-union NGO and the City Council of Barcelona with the collaboration of the University of Rovira i Virgili (URV).
Context and objectives of the workshop
In the last years, tourism management has received an extraordinary attention from public and private actors on how to monitor, evaluate and improve its competitiveness. However, little attention has been put on developing governance frameworks and policy making instruments to deal with the environmental and social sustainability of urban tourism derived from mass tourism.
The study “Urban Tourism Sustainability in European Cities” leaded by eco-union, with the support of the City of Barcelona and the collaboration of the University of Rovira i Virgili, has analysed consolidated European city destinations, to understand how economic, environmental and social sustainability is taking into consideration in their policies and strategies and which kind of instruments are put in place to manage different tourism issues.
The overall objective of this workshop was to debate and share practices dealing with growing urban tourism issues (i.e. overtourism, gentrification, illegal renting, air/noise pollution, work conditions, etc). Particularly, the workshop looked at:
- Identification, monitoring and assessment of urban tourism issues.
- Policy instruments for sustainable tourism in cities.
- New governance frameworks for tourism and urban sustainability.
Participants invited were tourism directors or policy officers from major European cities (Barcelona, Paris, Lisbon, Stockholm, Marseille, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, San Sebastian, Santiago de Compostela and Valencia), as well as local and international stakeholders working on urban tourism policies (OECD, etc.) and researchers, experts and public/private agencies related to urban tourism.