Revitalizing Remote And Mountainous areas through Sustainable Alternative Tourism

Mountains have always had a symbolic and metaphorical meaning, evoking an experience of spiritual elevation. In the latest years, they grow as a tourism destination because of their landscape which provides the opportunities to escape from the increasingly urbanized environments.
However, this considerable potential for tourism remains often misused, through the mass tourism that harms the fragile biodiversity​ and the uniqueness of these areas, or unused, with the local population and businesses left alone and unable to benefit from it.
RAMASAT is designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of Remote And Mountainous areas through Sustainable Alternative Tourism.
To achieve this goal, RAMSAT set up 2 Interregional Workshop, 4 Thematic Seminars and 36 meeting with local stakeholder, all along Europe: from the Pleven Heights (BG) to the Natural Park of the Serra of S. Mamede (PT), passing through the Marginimea Sibiului (RO), the Sava Hills (SI), the Iberian Sistem (ES) and the Sperrin Mountains (UK-NI).
For 36 months, the project partners will transfer knowledge, identify good practices and exchange experience from regions where these policies have been already developed and put into effect, with the overall objective to preserve, promote and develop the natural heritage of their territories, while strengthening economic and social cohesion.
Balancing environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects, the partners will develop action plans to protect the biodiversity and preserve the natural environment while increasing the number of visits to sites of cultural and natural heritage.Through the exchange of good practice and knowledge, RAMSAT intends to improve regional and local policies which are aimed at the development of alternative tourism in the remote and mountainous areas, in order to ensure the protection and sustainable use of natural resources and cultural heritage, and consequently revitalise those areas.
In particular, RAMSAT will focus on 4 forms of sustainable alternative tourism:
- Eco-Tourism, as a form of responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people and involves interpretation and education;
- Adventure Tourism, as a niche type that involves exploring and travel to remote areas and practising outdoors activities (i.e., trekking, climbing, biking, paragliding, rafting);
- Cultural Tourism, as a subset of tourism concerned with a region's cultural identity, specifically the lifestyle, history, architecture, religion and other elements that help shape it;
- Rural Tourism, as a way to include and benefit rural communities, while preserving their environment, inviting the tourist to participate in activities, lifestyles and traditions of the host community.
So that sub-objectives are:
- involving all key stakeholders in project activities and in the design and implementation of action plans;
- individuate, exchanging and adjusting good practices regarding the protection, promotion and development of natural heritage resources;
- providing participating regions with the necessary knowledge and tools to develop specific strategies to address the overall objective;
- promoting achieved results within the EU and including them in the regional policies of the participating countries.
The main objective could be summarised in:
- increase the number of visits to cultural and natural heritage and attractions;
- increase the amount of investment in promoting, preserving and improving the natural and cultural heritage.The overall objective is enhancing the awareness of the challenges, linked with the sustainable use of NCH and resources through the development of sustainable alternative tourism in remote and mountainous areas; improve the regional policies for the protection and promotion of natural and cultural heritage and applying the learned lessons in development of new action plans at the regional level.
On the basis of the different activities, we can list:
EXCHANGE OF EXPERIENCE:
- 36 Stakeholder Working Group (SWG): one per partner, every 6 months, over 3 years.
- 30 SWOT regional analysis: one per region on the initial situation and one per each topic of the thematic seminars (4).
- 4 Thematic Seminar (TS), dedicated to 4 different declinations of the sustainable alternative tourism, hosted in 4 different regions.
- 2 Interregional Workshop (IW), one at the beginning and one at the end of Phase 1, respectively to discuss the state of art of the regions and to action plans to implement.
- 6 Study Visits: one per regions, during the corresponding interregional events hosted.
- 48 best practices defined: previous to each thematic seminar, each SWG (4 meeting x 6 partners) will define 2 best practices to present at the event.
- 1 Final Dissemination Event, during Phase 2, in accord with the Interreg Europe requirements.
COMMUNICATION AND DISSEMINATION:
- 1 project website.
- 3 project social media account (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter).
- 1 project poster (100 copies).
- 1 information leaflet (1,000 copies).
- 42 press release (one per each SWGs, TSs, IWs and the Final Dissemination Event).
- 7 press conference (after each TSs, IWs and the Final Dissemination Event).
- 7 newsletter.
- 16 best practices submitted to the Policy Learning Platform and collected in an e-book.
- 1 Final Dissemination Video, to summarise the main events and the key lessons learnt during the project.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
- 1 Partnership Agreement signed.
- 3 Project Meeting.
- 7 Steering Committee meeting.
- 6 Progress Report.
- 1 Final Project Report.
- Attendance at the Interreg Europe's Seminar and Workshop.
- Day-to-day coordination between partners, via mail, and Skype or phone calls if needed.