Promotion of authentic rural experiences in traditional cultural landscapes through homestay and hospitality in rural villages, stimulating relationships between citizens and visitors through their participation in traditional activities such as agricultural and landscape maintenance, crafts, etc.

Pilot: Larnaca, Cyprus

Immersive experience of places combining new ways of enjoying and learning about intangible cultural heritage–such as local gastronomy, wine, craft, music, language, history and traditional skills –with a more intimate and reflexive inner journey. Sensorial heritage experience includes learning and educational activities addressed to all age groups to get in contact more deeply with the local culture and traditions through their intangible heritage expressions using the five senses.

Pilot: Vojvodina, Serbia

Contemporary interpretation of cultural heritage sites through artistic creation, linking past and future perspectives and re-generating heritage “intrinsic value”, its meanings and sense, while generating intense emotional experience addressing citizens and visitors at the same time; also, developing new forms of heritage enjoyment such as gamification and virtual travel experience, creative and unconventional story-telling for example co-developed involving residents, and augmented ways to enjoy cultural heritage such as augmented reality and immersive hybrid digital-physical experience.

Pilot: Basilicata, Italy

Religious heritage appreciation intertwined with nature enjoyment, joining physical and spiritual health enhancement. This includes pilgrimage routes, spiritual retreats, and other diverse ways to regenerate and conserve religious heritage places, promoting the value of religious heritage by raising public interest and encouraging community engagement in the conservation and safeguarding of Europe’s religious heritage.

Pilot: Romania-Moldova, Cross-Border Region

Nature can be perceived as cultural heritage by exploring the meanings and values of natural areas, their “genius loci” recognized over centuries and millennia. Natural heritage includes also, for example, the cultural meanings attributed to the view of the sky in local cultures, often linked with mythology and traditional practices, as in astro-tourism experiences promoted by starlight reserves initiatives. Moreover, local biodiversity, as autochthonous flora and fauna species, and/or important geologic areas, can become symbols of a territory and thus part of the cultural identity of local communities. Enjoying “nature as heritage” means also developing eco-tourism, trekking, sports, active & adventure experiential tourism solutions in natural heritage sites.

Pilot: Teruel, Spain

Transformative travel permanently affects you: it focuses on learning and educational experiences, self-reflection, self-discovery or re-discovery, and integrates the experiences enjoyed during the trip back into the visitor’s daily life back home. Travelling alone can be a way to develop confidence and new social skills. This is a growing tourism segment, including not only single millennials but even middle-aged people. However, women travelling alone or in small groups do not always feel safe and trustful of local people. This includes finding new ways for making women feel comfortable, find trustful local people, and develop soft skills through cultural tourism.

Home working has been one of the primary effects of the pandemic. As the situation pursued, an increasing number of workers, especially creative and cultural industry workers, have started to look for remote working destinations. Some authorities and organisations in charge of tourism are looking into long-term attraction of this visitor’s segment, hoping that this trend will stay beyond the long-tail of the pandemic in order to support local economies without displacing any permanent residents’ jobs

Another impact of the pandemic is the increasing trend of so-called proximity tourism, also known as “staycation”: this is a practice that consists of travelling close-by to one’s daily environment. Citizens re-discover nearby cultural and natural sites, becoming “tourist at home”. What motivated travellers to pick this option is the willingness to rediscover a place in a different way, organising various tourist activities, living unusual experiences and responding to a need for a break from everyday life while remaining in an environment close to home.