Projects

DESTIMED+

Ecotourism in Mediterranean Destinations: From Monitoring and Planning to Promotion and Policy Support

destimed-parc-natural-garrotxa
Zona Volcànica de la Garrotxa Natural Park, one of the pilot areas included in the DESTIMED+ project

Project Summary: 

DestiMED PLUS supports Mediterranean regions to develop, manage and promote ecotourism in their natural parks. This project builds on the successes of MEET and DestiMED projects, Destimed PLUS improves the integration of tourism and conservation policies in Mediterranean regions, creating ecotourism products in their protected areas through a collaborative approach – form Monitoring and Planning to Promotion and Policy. DestiMED PLUS will establish a Med Ecotourism Consortium (MEC) of conservation and tourism actors from regional administration which will work to capitalize on tools and strengthen policy frameworks for ecotourism. Existing monitoring tools will be harmonized and an online learning platform produced, allowing local and regional authorities to measure sustainability and improve participatory governance. 

DestiMED PLUS project is coordinated by Regione Lazio and counts with a total of 13 partners from 6 Med countries.  The project has been 85% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg MED Horizontal Programme.

destimed-interreg

Our role in the project: 

In DestiMED PLUS, BETA Tech Center is mainly responsible for the Socio-Economic assessment of the ecotourism packages. Moreover, BETA will develop the socio-economic indicators and methodology that are going to be used for assessing the socio-economic performance of the ecotourism packages. Additionally, BETA is going to carry out the Water Footprint assessment of the ecotourism packages and set up a platform that gathers the data of the whole project with the aim to help Protected Areas and local/regional institutions to develop and assess ecotourism in their region.