11th TSG4 meeting dedicated to Sustainable Tourism – report from Bari

The meeting was organized by the Ministry of Tourism of Croatia acting as the coordinator of the EUSAIR Pillar 4 and as the Facility Point Partner of Croatia. The meeting was organized with support of the Puglia region.

Representatives of six out of eight countries participated at the event, namely Albania, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia joined online via GoToMeeting on Stakeholder Platform. This was for the first time that a Stakeholder Platform was used by the TSG members who were not able to be physically present at the TSGs meeting. The representatives of the European Commission DG REGIO, the Facility Point Lead Partner from Slovenia and invited guests AI-NURECC, Interreg PANORAMED project and Interreg ADRION programme were also present to share information.

The participants agreed that the 11^th Pillar 4 meeting was a very productive. The interim report on the issue paper titled ”Manual for participatory tourism connecting community and culture through storytelling”, was positively accepted by all participants and decision on developing this Manual was confirmed.

On the occasion of the 11^th TSG4 meeting, participants were also informed on cooperation activities with AI-NURECC, PANORAMED and Council of Europe’s Routes4U project – cultural routes development programs.

The TSG4 members approved the final audit trail for three strategic project development ideas (Green Mapping, DES_AIR and CulTourAir), meaning that the public procurement could start immediately. Greece presented another proposal for strategic project development and Italy announced their strategic project proposal to be sent soon.

Serbian Chairmanship of EUSAIR plan was presented by the Serbian representative, and TSG4 members are invited to propose Pillar 4 related topics for the next AII Round table and 5^th EUSAIR Forum in Belgrade. The The next, 12th TSG4 meeting will be hosted by Greece in Thessaloniki next year April 2020.