Tourism is more than travelling and consumption; it has great potential when it comes to culture, nature, knowledge and personal experiences. Travelling is a way to learn and improve oneself, to enrich one’s vision and improve mutual understanding.

The INCULTUM project deals with the challenges and opportunities of cultural tourism with the aim of furthering sustainable social, cultural and economic development. It will explore the full potential of marginal and peripheral areas when managed by local communities and stakeholders. Innovative participatory approaches will be adopted, transforming locals into protagonists, able to reduce negative impacts, learning from and improving good practices to be replicated and translated into strategies and policies.

Furthermore, INCULTUM fosters intercultural understanding through the implementation of bottom-up strategies that can have positive effects for both, locals and tourists. Ten pilot cases of living territories and communities will be investigated and on the basis of the findings innovative customised solutions will be co-created. Additionally, pilots will be used to identify and compare drivers and barriers that account for the success or failure of participatory models. Pilots will also enable us to assess outcomes and analyse the pre-conditions needed for a future full implementation and scaling up of potential solutions. Pilots will provide new quantitative and qualitative data that will be combined with official statistics and novel data gathered by the use of self-developed IT applications and the exploitation of previously untapped data sources.

The implementation of advanced econometric methods and the pioneering introduction of machine-learning tools into tourism research will push the boundaries of our knowledge. Findings will enable us to suggest recommendations for effective and sustainable policies, create new synergies among public and private stakeholders and new investments, including Structural Funds.

An interdisciplinary group of partners will effectively deploy knowledge and participate in the various project’s activities:

• Coordinator: UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA, Spain
• UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI, Slovakia
• COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL, Denmark
• PROMOTER SRL, Italy
• UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK – Syddansk Universitet, Denmark
• UNIVERSITA DI PISA, Italy
• UPPSALA UNIVERSITET, Sweden
• G.A.L Elimos, Italy
• EACHTRA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS, Ireland
• Bibracte, France
• The Hish Mountains cooperative, Greece
• CeRPHAAL, Albania
• UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE, Portugal
• Patronato Provincial de Turismo de Granada, Spain
• Municipality of Permet, Albania