During the „State-of-the-art in European cultural tourism policies and practices” SmartCulTour webinar on the 20th of June members from the Horizon 2020 SmartCulTour (http://www.smartcultour.eu/) and SPOT (http://www.spotprojecth2020.eu/) projects discussed cultural tourism policies, responses to Covid-19 and success conditions of different types of cultural tourism interventions.
After the introduction by the SmartCulTour project coordinator, Bart Neuts (organiser, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of KU Leuven) Prof. Claire Wallace (University of Aberdeen) presented findings on the impact of COVID-19 on cultural tourism from the SPOT project. She talked about worldwide changes in patterns of tourism and the possible long-term consequences of the pandemic as well. John Shaddock (University of Aberdeen) presented SPOT findings about policies around cultural tourism, and how these policies are experienced in practice. Simone Moretti (Breda University of Applied Sciences) talked about cultural tourism inverventions, with a particular focus on taxonomy, best practices and lessons learnt in the framework of the SmartCulTour project. As a continuation Licia Calvi and Caroline Belt presented best practices, the Brabant Remembers App and the Huesca Living Lab. Following a debate led by Alun Jones (CIHEAM Zaragoza), in the closing remarks Milada Šťastná (Mendel University), coordinator of the SPOT project stressed the importance of cultural tourism policies and that the interconnectedness and communication between stakeholders of different levels is the way we can address identified gaps and progress cultural tourism in the way we think would make it stronger, more resilient and sustainable. To watch the recording of the webinar please visit http://www.smartcultour.eu/webinar-state-of-the-art/
