Final Report on SUT-Governance Project available [29.10.2003]

EU 'SUT-Governance' Project - Final Report

In August 2003, ITAS successfully concluded on a European-wide R&D project 'Sustainable Urban Tourism: Involving Local Agents and Partnerships for New Forms of Governance' ('SUT-GOVERNANCE').

The principal aim of this 3-year initiative, part of the Key Action 4 "City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage", "Fifth Framework Program" of the European Union, was to develop, validate, and deploy a general framework for urban sustainable tourism partnerships that is applicable to a variety of urban municipal contexts. The broader goal of the project was to elaborate and promote innovative forms and instruments of local governance to improve urban tourism development involving the principles of sustainability and participatory decision-making.

The Final 'SUT-Governance' Project Report provides summary information on the overall scientific results and deliverables of this multi national collaborative effort. The findings and the outcomes are of much relevance to the five-fold European concerns for Sustainability, Competitiveness, Governance, Institutional Innovation and Enlargement. Four project deliverables can have a direct influence on the future policies:

  1. The Set of European 'Best Practice' Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Tourism for others to learn and improve practice
  2. The Unified Framework Model for Effective SUT Partnerships for improving tourism management and promoting local governance
  3. The SUT Partnership Benchmarking Method and Tool for assessing practice, measuring success and improving performance of existing or planned collaborative initiatives in tourism (on line self-assessment tool available free of charge on the project web site: http://sut.itas.fzk.de) and
  4. The endorsed European Platform and Forum for enforcing further governance for sustainable urban tourism in our cities.

The set of systematic concepts, methodological approaches and policy recommendations in Governance for Sustainable (urban) Tourism promoted by the project, and particularly its policy and community-centred approach to defining sustainable tourism, can be used by tourism decision-makers and other stakeholders alike in their future thrives to innovation and success.

The SUT-Governance team trusts the project results can lead to new ideas, discussions and innovative projects in sustainable tourism, destination management and integrated territorial development in Europe and beyond.

Bibliographic details:
Krassimira Paskaleva-Shapira
EU 'SUT-Governance' Project - Final Report. Karlsruhe: Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe 2003