Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (NSTO HUB)

The NSTO was co-created in origin in the frame of the Best MED Project (Interreg MED Program) by two of its partners: Lazio Region (Italy) and CPMR (Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, France) to solve the need of transfer and reuse tools in sustainable tourism as the Best MED Sustainable & Cultural Path, -a system of indicators to measure sustainability on European Cultural Routes- developed by the CAST (Centre for Advanced Studies of Tourism, University of Bologna). The concept of the NSTO was presented during the technical workshop of Best MED Project held in Rome on 9^th-10^th December 2020 with the participation of relevant stakeholders of the sector from the Mediterranean area.

 A second more detailed document, called NSTO Reflection Paper, was delivered for the “BEST MED Seminar on NSTO development and data management standards“, celebrated on 16^th December 2021 in Rome, with the involvement of 200 participants.

This Reflection Paper was followed by the policy document NSTO Roadmap, presented at the technical seminar on 21^st June 2022 in Rome, that suggested an evolutionary path for this NSTO to transit from a coordination system to an operative working group at multiple levels.

In addition, five meetings were organized at local and regional level by the Best MED partners (March-May, 2022) aimed at triggering a participatory approach and bringing together local, regional, and national tourism observatories and entities working on sustainable tourism data collection and monitoring for the consolidation of the network. These meetings served both to attract and encourage new observatories to join the NSTO as well as to maintain contact and exchanges with the observatories already part of the initiative, mainly updating them on the latest developments in the creation process.

Finally, the Granada Charter was created, a document that translated the information gathered in the MED S&C Path Model into practical messages aimed at informing European policy design for effective actions in sustainable tourism.

This Charter included a section dedicated to data sharing, harmonization and interoperability, highlighting how a better and smarter connection of the existing Mediterranean Observatories could play a key role.

As part of its policy recommendations, the Charter made reference to the NSTO with the aim of engaging stakeholders to boost the development of this Mediterranean Network.

This NSTO encompasses the GTI (Greening the Islands) Observatory -organisation partner of the Interreg Euro-MED Sustainable Mission-. This Observatory was launched at the 2018 GTI international conference of Minorca, resulting from the need to give continuity to scientific exchanges to support the development of projects through task forces, to promote public-private collaboration, mature policy recommendations, creating coalitions for tenders, while engaging all relevant stakeholders.

The GTI Observatory Global Index assesses and monitor islands progress towards sustainability. More recently, GTI has worked on assisting islands to obtain a recognized sustainable tourism certification.

The main objectives of the NSTO are:

• Cooperate in the sharing of data management strategies and models relating to sustainable tourism;
• Share information and specific tools useful for that purpose along with best practices encouraging the transfer of knowledge in line with sector skills;
• Organise one annual activity, also in relation to the funding opportunities available at EU, national, regional and local level;
• Collect re-usable data on sustainable tourism relevant for the Mediterranean area and reuse it to elaborate new documents, studies or analysis;
• Contribute to the goals and activities of UN Tourism (UNWTO until 2023) INSTO (United Nations International Network of Sustainable Tourism) and the EU works on data in the field of sustainable tourism (e.g. connect with or power up some specific activities, help collect useful information, give support to the implementation of strategies, among other);
• Looking at the medium-term, the NSTO will move towards the 2030 horizon by contributing to two key framing initiatives:

1. The EU Transition Pathway for Tourism and its topics 3 and 4. Topic 3 on improving statistics and indicators for tourism covers: Revising harmonised data collection rules on tourism statistics to include elements on economic, social and environmental sustainability; improving access to data for producing official statistics; including key sustainability indicators on destination level to the harmonised tourism data collection framework; and implementing the EU Tourism Dashboard to support follow-up of environmental, digital and socioeconomic aspects of tourism on EU, national and regional levels. Topic 4 deals with comprehensive tourism strategies or update including developing national or regional strategies considering economic, environmental and social sustainability of tourism.

2. The Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action in Tourism, particularly called for measure tourism-related emissions. The Glasgow Declaration aims to urge and enable all travel and tourism stakeholders to sign and demonstrate, for the first time as a united sector, a shared voice and commitment for aligning the sector’s climate ambitions with scientific recommendations and international agreements. This Declaration supports the global commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050.

The NSTO is willing to contribute to the goals and activities of UN Tourism formerly UNWTO until 2023) INSTO (United Nations Tourism International Network of Sustainable Tourism). For this reason, exchanges with the UN Tourism department in charge of the INSTO, have been taking place since the creation of the Best MED Project NSTO (2014-2020), trying also to gather advise for the pre-establishment process of the NSTO itself.

The main objectives of this cooperation are to ensure coherence between both initiatives by regularly exchanging information, promoting each other’s results and triggering synergies. In this sense, the cooperation framework will explore reciprocal commitment in transferring the results of the Interreg Euro-MED Projects of the Sustainable Tourism Mission and the works of the UN Tourism-INSTO, as well as concrete ways to ensure the regular dialogue and synergies.

On the other hand, data concerning sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean area are mainly about three different levels of complexity:

• Official Statistics data, under the work of EUROSTAT and national statistic institutes (e.g. ISTAT in Italy);
• Use of big data to understand main processes in tourist flows, preferences and activities (e.g. flows from airports to major towns, inside the area of big cities, from towns with airports/ports hub to the rest of local communities of a province or region);
• Use of indicators -especially indicators on sustainability-, to evaluate pressure of tourism activities on the environment (and other spheres of sustainability, including social and economical). Indicators are often also built on information not gathered necessarily through official statistics but through local/regional/national stakeholders operating in the tourism sector.

A significant challenge is to integrate data knowledge into land use planning, particularly concerning coastal areas within the framework of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) approach.

Also, the former Interreg MED modular projects -like MITOMED+ or DESTIMED-, but also others as Coasting, CO-EVOLVE and Best MED have developed in the past innovative approaches and implemented new methods of testing in pilot areas aimed at stablishing standards and models suitable to be applied with adaptations in the whole MED area.

Therefore, there is a strong need for integration, sharing information, methods and tools between different actors and stakeholders, considering the complexity of the matter and the fragmentation of approaches to data management for Tourism. This is, in any case, a governance challenge of multilevel coordination. The Annex to the MoU of the MED Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories will enlarge the contents and will define the common vision and the commitment for transnational collaboration and the NSTO sustainability.

The working group of the NSTO is open to public and private bodies at local, regional and national levels involved in data collection and analysis for sustainable tourism, not only for improving the way they assess tourism trends for different purposes, but also for developing an analysis of their own tourism strategies.

These bodies undertake to share approaches, methodologies, data and resources based on the network’s objectives, contributing to the widest and most complete collection of tourism data possible that will be sharing during one annual event in the frame of the Interreg Euro-MED Sustainable Tourism Mission.

At a later stage (corresponding to the finalization of the Interreg Euro-MED Dialogue4Tourism Project), the organisations will be able to make use of the data collected contributing to the transfer and reuse.

Among these bodies are included the following:

• European Commission
• Tools/instruments such as Eurostat and the Virtual Tourism Observatory
• Member states: Ministries and agencies working in the development of SMEs, tourism innovation, investment and/or energy efficiency,
• Renewable energy sources, environmental protection and climate etc.) statistics offices
• Regional and local bodies: public entities (or specific directorates inside their bodies)
• Destination Management Organizations (DMOs / DMCs)
• Public and private entities such as scientific institutions, research centers and universities dealing with tourism and data.
• Private entities (enterprises or associations in the tourism sector potential contributors to the activities of the NSTO).

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