Traveling can have a positive or devastating impact on a nature destination and its surrounding society, depending on the design of tourist experiences and services. International trends indicate that travelers are increasingly conscious of sustainability issues and require experiences that fills these needs, which can be seen in the growing slow adventure tourism flows. The Interreg Aurora funded project Regenerative nature tourism – REGGAE will introduce regenerative tourism that is regarded as a transformational approach that aims to fulfil the potential of tourism places to flourish and create net positive effects through increasing the regenerative capacity of human societies and ecosystems. At the same time, the project will address the needs of small and medium-sized tourism enterprises, who are struggling with challenges such as value for money, shortage of customers, identifying sale channels, lack of collegial networks, low visibility and sometimes feelings of loneliness.
The aim of the REGGAE project is to promote accessible and regenerative tourism and to enhance the well-being of entrepreneurs in the project area by building networks andclusters, developing courses, guidebook and novel thematic tourism experiences. By the increased competence of entrepreneurs and the development of thematic tourism experiences co-created together with customers, researchers, local community and entrepreneurs, tourism firms can attract new customers.
Finally, the competitiveness of the tourism firms is enhanced while bringing wider benefits to the travel destination. Cross-border products through cross-branch networks and clusters support the understanding of valuable joint culture and rich history as well as how our prosperous but vulnerable nature is as a resource for all. Thus, the acceptability of sustainable tourism services increases, and tourists take home lessons on how to give back to nature. Regenerative tourism will increase well-being and prosperity for nature, society, culture and a more stable income for entrepreneurs.
Read more on the project website.
The project has been appointed as an Operation of Strategic Importance by the Interreg Aurora Programme. This means a project which provides a significant contribution to the achievement of the objectives of the Interreg Aurora Programme.
