Best Med – (Beyond European Sustainable Tourism Med Path)

BEST MED project is being implemented in eight Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece and Montenegro) with the general objective of enhancing Mediterranean Governance, being the main challenges to tackle seasonality and the lack of effective cooperation among main tourism actors, including the citizen active participation on the policies design. It aims to have a new integrated and sustainable tourism planning approach, to contribute to the mitigation of seasonality in the MED area, through the connection between coastal and inland regions, such as a path-route method. A testing phase will allow to build a joint model that will be transferred and capitalised, as well as a toolkit and updates set of data indicators.
BEST MED will follow a strategy of previous approaches and outputs, testing an updated toolkit of data and indicators, contributing to the design of a new Green model (MED S&C PathSustainable Path & Cultural Routes Model), focusing on integration of tourism planning into wider development strategies, together with mobilizing key players both at local and specifically at transnational level, creating synergies across MED countries and promoting the awareness of the MED area. Among the main objectives of the project, in particular, at paving the way for the creation of a network of Tourism Observatories in the Mediterranean area based on a participatory approach.
Of great support for the actions envisaged is the INSTO, UNWTO's “International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories”
Best Med’s intervention field is also the promotion of tourism sustainability planning in local territorial systems. To this purpose special focus is placed on the presentation of “Best Med Sustainable & Cultural path model” meant to improve the sustainability policies along the Cultural Routes of the Mediterranean Basin. This model will be further developed in the next phases of BEST MED project, using pilot areas