The Interreg project “DestiMED” has been officially launched in Rome on January 19th, 2017. The inaugural address was given by the regional director of the environment and natural system department from the Lazio Region, Vito Consoli, to the representatives of the seven project partners.
DestiMED is a project funded by the Interreg MED Programme and aims at building the pre-conditions for a Mediterranean destination management organization (DMO) that will harmonize quality standards and tools to monitor compliance and to propose attractive ecotourism offers promoted through a lasting brand.
More specifically, the project will further develop and test ecotourism standards, offers and monitoring tools in 13 protected areas around the basin - forming the quality scheme of a future DMO. It will build on results of the MEET (Mediterranean Ecotourism Experience) project, where different planning and marketing approached were created and tested. These results will be enriched through the use of a monitoring tool.
IUCN-Med will also play an important role in the coordination of the communication work package, and the definition of the Mediterranean Ecotourism standards and the investigation of a related monitoring tool to assess the sustainability of ecotourism in protected areas.