MSC participation in new Horizon Europe project: SECreTour


25/08/2024

        SECreTour meeting at Matej Bej University
                                                   SECreTour meeting at Matej Bej University

The new collaborative research project, SECreTour, involving MSC and 10 other partners from 9 countries, has recently been launched. Funded by the EU under the Horizon Europe program, the official title is “Sustainable, Engaging and Creative Tourism as a driver for a better future in rural and remote areas” and it is part of the EU’s long-term focus on cultural tourism as a tool for sustainable development.
SECreTour logo The aim of SECreTour is to promote community-based and community-centred tourism in rural areas by focusing on the concepts of heritage communities and alternative or hybrid business models. CBS and MSC is charged with the

responsibility of developing the second concept taking stock of existing practices and literature on alternative business models as well as experimenting and implementing them in the 8 pilots scattered across Europe.

 

SECreTour builds on the foundations laid by the 3-year Horizon 2020 project, INCULTUM, that recently ended. INCULTUM focused on developing innovative cultural tourism products in marginal and peripheral destinations. Some of the most promising developments involved the activation of local communities into heritage communities and the formalization of innovative contracts that can be used as inspiration for alternative business model developments in other rural locations.

 

The MSC team in INCULTUM was responsible for the Impact, evaluation and exploitation plan and was actively engaged in the conceptual developments regarding the construction of heritage communities and the fostering of alternative business models that constitute the bridge between the two projects. For more results, including two chapters by MSC scholars, the book Innovative Cultural Tourism in European Peripheries will appear on Routledge shortly. Find more information about INCULTUM research on the Cordis – EU research results page: about the project in general here and about sustainable cultural tourism in particular here.

 

For further information, visit the SECreTour project website or contact the MSC participants Carsten Humlebæk, cjh.msc@cbs.dk, Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen, ergp.msc@cbs.dk, or Viktor Smith, vs.msc@cbs.dk.