Exploiting Tourism 4.0 potentials for the Black Sea

Authors: Matteo Bocci, Thanos Smanis (CLIMAZUL)
Co-authors: Hrvoje Ratkajec, Samo Erzen, Urska Starc-Peceny, Tomi Ilijas (Arctur), Paul Goriup (Agricola NGO), Mamuka Berdzenishvili (Batumi Tourism Institute), Andrei Schvab (Ovidius University)

 

The publication is part of the Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea (T4BS) Project, co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).

 

Introducing Tourism 4.0 and the Tourism for Black Sea (T4BS) project

The Tourism 4.0 initiative aims to unlock the innovation potential of tourism by enabling collaboration between all stakeholders of the smart tourism ecosystem to co-create enriched experiences with the help of the key enabling technologies from Industry 4.0. Tourism 4.0 ecosystem puts local inhabitants and their quality of life in the centre of tourism models and, building on the UNWTO path, supports sustainable tourism as a driver for the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The basic idea is to ensure that the visitors actually respect local inhabitants and preserve environmental balance. They are visiting and willing to pay more to experience local authentic assets (culture, social traditions and local landscapes), and therefore these assets should be preserved and developed in a sustainable way. So, while still focusing on tourism and visitors, Tourism 4.0 offers data-driven tools to support local strategic decisions in tourism for win-win solutions for local economy and socio-environmental assets, which are the reasons why people come and visit and whose money are used for local development, on short and long term.

The edition is available here.