This document constitutes a Guide for tourism professionals, small hotel owners and relevant destination management stakeholders on how to integrate sustainability principles in the operation of their tourism related businesses. The Guide focuses on the context of Mediterranean countries exploring similarities and opportunities that are relevant for the promotion and uptake of sustainable practices among small enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism sector.
The Guide has been developed under the framework of the SUSTOUR-MED project (2021-2-EL01-KA210-VET-000048093) and will be used as the main training material during the organisation of two workshops in summer 2023, one in Greece and one in Italy, with 15 participants each. The Guide also intends to be a useful resource for all interested tourism stakeholders and SME representatives around the Mediterranean, providing them with some basic knowledge on sustainability related concepts as well practical examples on how those can be integrated in a tourism business operational context.
The aim of this document is to provide the theoretical knowledge behind sustainable tourism aspects in a straightforward way. It will focus on the EU and especially the Mediterranean context.
Also it will outline the particularities of the two SUSTOUR-MED targeted regions (Messina in Sicily and Korinthia in Greece) which share many similarities in terms of their touristic product and their environmental context. The regions’ background outline is the result of the needs analysis research that the two SUSTOUR-MED partners (Green Village - Greece and Education in Progress - Italy) undertook in the framework of the project.
Finally, the Guide’s chapter are in line with the defined SUSTOUR-MED themes. Each chapter includes an introduction and explanation of the respective theme, as well as a relevant best practice and case study which constitutes a practical example of how a tourism business can address the respective sustainability aspect.
The full list of the identified best practices is available on the SUSTOUR-MED website
