Do you want to avoid the tourist crowds of Europe? Avoid the usual places and discover hidden gems

The monastery of San Estevo de Rivas de Sil in northwestern Spain is less than 20 kilometres from the Camino de Santiago walking route, but for Martín López Nores the two places seemed worlds apart. That’s exactly what gave him the idea.
In 2019, López Nores, a professor at the Department of Telematics Engineering at the University of Vigo in Spain, attended an event at an 800-year-old monastery with researchers and local representatives. Participants discussed how best to revitalize the rural economy.

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While the Camino de Santiago has long been a popular pilgrimage route to the holy site where the Apostle St. James is buried, the monastery, considered one of the most spectacular heritage sites in Spain’s Galicia region, is often overlooked by tourists.

– We met in a special location, an extraordinary place that was not noticed by the thousands of pilgrims who passed by. We realized that we needed to increase the visibility of the monastery, attract people to it, encourage pilgrims on the route to know the area they pass through, and not just focus on reaching the next stop in the water. – says López Nores.

He leads a project that has won EU funding to help launch a new kind of tourism in Europe, one that moves away from the hordes of international tourists that crowd countless European towns for much of the year.

During the project, López Nores took seriously the ideas of one of the 20th century’s great wanderers, the late British writer and Greece lover Patrick Leigh Fermor, who in 1966 commented on the rise of mass tourism in Greece, writing that it “destroys the object of its love.”

López Nores promotes a different approach called “slow tourism,” which encourages visitors to take their time and explore their surroundings in more detail.

– Mass tourism consumes places, while cultural tourism is about creating meaningful connections with people and places. It is a non-destructive form of tourism that is good for everyone and somehow makes your mind richer and more interesting – he said.

Spread the wealth

The many people who make the pilgrimage to Santiago spend a fortune – more than €300 million in 2019 – but the economic benefits are relatively small because fewer tourists stray from the route.

The phenomenon spread across culturally rich Europe and inspired a group of Spanish and Portuguese researchers, including López Nores, to join forces in an effort to expand the benefits of the pilgrims. Country charmtheir project lasts for three years, until the end of 2023.

The team aims to boost the appeal of “cultural tourism” in countries from Spain to Norway and ensure that tourist revenues exceed those from places far off the beaten track.

Camino de Santiago is now available on your kreirali portal application Highlight cultural destinations near the route. These include museums, natural beauty spots, and bars and restaurants serving local specialties such as wines from the Ribeira region. In this way, the project has marked a total of 7,632 places on the map.

Written and audio guides are available, local voices and history, as well as information grouped into themes such as natural beauty and regional traditions.

Other pilgrimage routes covered by the rurALLURE project include the route to the Italian capital of Rome, the Way of St. Olaf to Trondheim, Norway, and the Way of Mary through Central Europe to Chiksomlyo, Romania.

A new way of thinking

The researchers are looking beyond the technology itself to try to stimulate a change in the mindset of businesses, cultural institutions and other organizations associated with different routes. López Nores said the competitive mentality that once led to the vandalism of road signs at rival tourist attractions in some parts of Europe has been replaced by a spirit of cooperation.

Mrena More than 100 members across Europe are currently coordinating their efforts, believing they can get visitors to work together to increase the popularity of walking routes as a whole. Best practices and insights into what is not working well are freely available.

For example, López Nores said the northern Portuguese town of Vila do Conde, a highlight of the Camino de Santiago walking route, had long been shunned by tourists who flew into Porto and headed north to Santiago de Compostela.

The rurALLURE portal and app now showcase the city, along with multimedia content, through guided tours of the literary heritage of the Camino de Santiago. As a result, the region is thriving as a destination for pilgrims and literature lovers.

– This collaboration strengthens our cultural community and promotes the exchange of knowledge and resources, which benefits everyone- said Ivone Teixeira, coordinator of the Vila do Conde Museum.

While the impact of the rurALLURE app is hard to measure in terms of total visitor numbers, it’s clearly significant for some places. Zaclada Otero Pedrayo For example, in the Galician village of Amoeiro, the number of visitors increased significantly thanks to the presentation of locations in the rurALLURE project related to the Silver Route, the longest and least used route to the Caminos de Santiago. The number of visitors to the former residence of this great figure of Galician culture increased from a handful to nearly 200 per year.

Area around Caronari

The European Neighborhood Community is the center of another EU-funded tourism project called UncultivatedThe project, which stands for Innovative Cultural Tourism, will take three years to complete in April 2024. The Austrians have chosen 10 pilot sites in nine countries, from Ireland to Slovakia. These places are all in remote areas that do not appear in traditional tourist guides.

– We want to highlight the value and potential of cultural heritage that is denied or hidden. We use tourism as a tool, not a goal. ” said José María Martín Civantos, professor at the Department of Medieval History at the University of Granada, Spain, and project coordinator.

In Ireland, pilot projects included a grassroots heritage conservation initiative where local groups conducted field surveys of historic cemeteries and recorded oral histories.

The initiative is called Historical cemeteryexpanded under the INCULTUM project to include deaths caused by the Great Famine of 1845-1852, when about a million people died.

At the time, more than a million people also emigrated from Ireland. Many of their descendants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand trace their ancestors through historical graves, with some traveling to Ireland as part of that process.

In Slovakia, the INCULTUM project includes an abandoned mining area in the central district of Banská Bystrica. The site is a source of industrial heritage, and local schools and other groups are working together to restore community memory.

An interactive digital map with “mining treasures” for visitors to see is in the works.
Coincidentally, this area is also on the digital map of the rurALLURE project, as it is located in the literal part of the Marijina puta.

Better balance

Both projects offer a map of Europe as they seek to expand the economic benefits of tourism and reduce its environmental costs. For Martín Civantos, Europe must work to revive rural areas in a way that is faithful to its past while reimagining the future. In the long run, he says, such an approach will benefit both tourists and local communities.

– It means that you visit a place but do not have a negative impact on the environment or the community. In fact, you help the community to preserve its values ​​and traditions and give something positive back – says Martín Civantos.

By Ali Jones

Research in this area is funded by the EU Horizon programme. The views of the interlocutors do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

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This article was originally published on asopishorizonEU Journal of Research and Innovation.