Sustainable Tourism evidence-informed Policy

SusTPol [Sustainable Tourism evidence-informed Policy] advances the understanding of using sustainability indicators to inform the governance of urban tourism.

EU tourism policies recognise the importance of sustainability for competiveness, and the Commission contracted the University of Surrey to develop the European Tourism Indicator System.

Yet the Commission still equates success to tourism’s contribution to growth and employment, and both Eurostat and European Cities Marketing measure tourist volume and expenditure, but not data on the impact that tourism has on residents or the environment.

This IF contributes to implementing Communication “Europe, the world's No 1 tourist destination – a new political framework for tourism in Europe” and the Europe 2020 Strategy, by 1) experimenting with performance indicators of how tourism contributes to the EU policy on the Urban Environment, and 2) empowering policy makers so tourism contributes to implementing policies for sustainable urban planning and design.

SusTPol analyses how tourist boards learn about sustainability indicators, adapt them to their needs, transform their governance systems and exploit the competitive benefits accrued.

SusTPol collects baseline data (O1), supports tourist boards implement change in the form of policy-making experiments to support sustainable tourism development (O2) and conducts a Realist Evaluation (O3) of the contextual factors that allow for the use of indicators to support the selection and implementation of policy mechanisms that promote sustainable development.

The tourist boards in the cities of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Barcelona (Spain), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Vienna (Austria) agreed to participate as pilots, adapting their tourism planning, visitor management and marketing based on the results of residents’ social impact assessment of tourism. The outcomes will inform European Cities Marketing, enhancing the transferability and impact of this project.