CLLD-CulTour Project

Community-led Local Development of Cultural Tourism in Greece and Albania – CLLD-CulTour

Composed by 4 beneficiaries with extensive experience in EU-funded projects (Municipality of Zitsa-LB, Municipality of Metsovo, Regional Council of Korce, Municipality of Dropull) with abundant cultural resources, CLLD-CulTour argues that cultural tourism can provide an alternative to mass tourism in cross-border territories, and hence, reduce its negative effects (e.g., seasonality, excesses in carrying capacity of the coastal zone) and contribute to the reduction of unemployment in programme territories. However, despite the abundance of cultural resources in programme territories, the fact that tangible and intangible cultural resources tend to be scattered and isolated across programme territories, alongside the organizational and financial weaknesses of the cultural sector and public administrations, means that so far, programme territories have not managed to valorize their potential for cultural tourism development.

CLLD-CulTour suggests that these weaknesses can be overcome through the application of the Community-Led Local Development tool (CLLD) to the design and advancement of cultural tourism development, which proposes the application of community-based planning through the function of local stakeholder action groups. Nevertheless, due to the isolation of cultural resources in cross-border territories, CLLD needs to be customized to be used therein through the formation of cross-border action groups in the cultural tourism sector.

CLLD-CulTour will increase the efficiency of the public sector for applying innovative community-based approaches to development, and will ensure community involvement in the preservation and valorisation of cultural heritage. To achieve this, CLLD-CulTour will cover the whole spectrum of the process of customizing and applying CLLD in cross-border territories.

CLLD is a tool focusing on the formation of local action groups composed of public and private sector stakeholders that co-design and implement development plans. Since the application of CLLD to the cultural tourism sector requires the utilisation of a large number of tangible and intangible cultural resources scattered in different locales, CLLD-CulTour customises CLLD to be applied in cross-border territories and perform the following functions:

• identification of specific tangible or intangible cultural resources that can be of interest to tourists,
• formation of linkages between similar or thematically relevant cultural resources so as to articulate unique and satisfying tourism experiences, formation of cross-border action groups, and
• application of integrated and multi-sectorial cross-border development strategies.

Hence, the customised CLLD approach is used to develop the ‘Culture of the Cradle of Europe’ thematic touristic route that showcases the territory’s unique cultural heritage, by utilising innovative tools such as Web GIS platforms and exhibition centres.