Cultural gateways. For sustainable tourism in heritage regions

Abstract

To achieve more sustainable development based of tourism, cities should enhance their role of "gateways"to large, diverse cultural regions, enlarging the spatial scale of their tourism management strategy to involve a larger portion of the territory. In this way, costs and benefits arising from tourism would be in better balance, as mobility patterns within tourist regions increase in complexity and ease the pressure on cores. The supply chain of tourism also becomes more solid and diverse. The desired outcome of this restructuring process is one in which the peripheral localities take a more active role in the participation to a regional tourism economy. This can be achieved if they are able to elicit and sell their own cultural riches, appealing to visitors with sophisticated tastes, and connecting to the tourism chain that is currently focused on "central"products. Information and communication technologies not only enable a better coordination in tourism marketing, but also create a "business model"for challenging cultural initiatives, which can fit in existing distribution channels of tourism. In an on-going research project funded by a PIV grant by the Generalitat de Catalonia, these issues are explored utilising three pilot cases, Catalonia and in particular the tourist region of Barcelona, Galicia, and Veneto region in North-East Italy.