WP3 - Research and analysis
The WP3 concern the research and the analysis activities, and is carried out by the e-Tourism Research Group of the University of Trento (PP2). The objective is to define the most effective and efficient tools for sustainable tourist development in areas with unexplored potential and public-private governance tools, able to contribute towards the tourist development of the area and providing positive spin-offs, maintaining and increasing attractiveness both for visitors and local residents.
The point of reference for the analysis is the Weaver Model, a broad context model for tourist destination development, which deals with planning activities and the intensity of tourism in order to identify the development process turning an area from a location/village into a tourist destination.
The indicator of the sustainability of the tourist development process, will instead be the concept of Tourism Carrying Capacity, which is the maximum acceptable level of tourist development in an area without violating environmental, social and economic capacity goals.
The starting point of the WP is identification of target areas, characterised by communities with economic and environmental resources involving a number of different stakeholders, by a low degree of development or unexplored potential for tourism and by the presence of potentially convertible property.
The WP activities are divided into two phases:
1) mapping of the areas and analysis of governance tools (activities 1 and 2). In this phase, an in-depth analysis of the target areas will be obtained, with reference to:
- socioeconomic profile, normative context, listing of all resources which have some connection to tourism and critical evaluation of those resources in terms of their quality, uniqueness and tourist appeal;
- governance system, with the aim of understanding how and by whom the tourism system is managed, namely the decision-making process and the division of power and resources.
2) definition of new governance tools (activity 3). On the basis of the information gathered in phase 1 and previous experiences at other tourist destinations, the activities will be:
- data benchmarking. Comparison of the best practice/benchmarks in areas;
- definition of the most effective and efficient tools for public-private management of sustainable tourism development;
- areas of application of governance tools. The general model will be adapted to the specific characteristics of the different areas and on this basis, the kind of pilot project to be implemented in each area will be defined.