The SMART consortium got together for the second time in Xylokastro between 27-29th of July hosted by Green Village. A project meeting at this time of the year made it possible for the partners to get an in-depth understanding of the local tourism ecosystem as well as local and regional challenges. A meeting with the deputy mayor for culture and the advisor for tourism confirmed the need for stakeholder initiatives and projects such as SMART to positively contribute to the development of a more sustainable and resilient tourism sector.

During the meeting, the partners reviewed the work carried out for the production of the SMART Practice Manual and discussed the upcoming workshops to take place in the three countries. The Practice Manual will provide an  introduction to the priorities of digitalisation and sustainability for tourism in Europe as well as the role of digital tools and skills for sustainable tourism and general trends. It will provide national profiles for France, Greece and Spain and look into the tools available and how they contribute to more sustainable tourism destinations by supporting businesses, tourism organisations, educators and other stakeholders in the tourism ecosystem. Furthermore, partners will look into challenges (technical, organisational, regulatory, take up, audiences, cost-efficiency etc.) with the development and/or use/roll out of these digital tools. In addition, the document will also discuss how to assess skills needs and select the right tools as well as provide an overview of the practices collected during the first phase of the project (all practices will soon be available in French, Greek and Spanish in addition to the version in English, which is already available online). Please check back in a couple of months to download the final version of the SMART Practice Manual.