ESPON Peer Learning Workshop - The Future of Cruise Tourism in the Adriatic Sea


Venue

Online

27 October 2020




The European seas have become an important area where interregional interests and challenges interact. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) aims to reconcile these interactions in line with the spin off and interests at the adjoining landsides. Marine and terrestrial spatial planning are policy fields that inevitably have a strong, mutual influence on each other, which translates to the Land-Sea Interactions (LSI).


ESPON has already conducted several studies (MSP-LSI, ENSURE, TITAN, Locate, BT2050) that gathered territorial evidence and triggered discussions for these policy fields. This ESPON Peer Learning Workshop (PLW) will focus on one part of those challenges; the specific topic of cruise tourism in the field of MSP-LSI, and specifically for the Adriatic Sea basin. The PLW will gather various involved stakeholders from the academic, public and private sectors, in order to exchange experiences, views and approaches, and outline roads for future research and policy needs.

Since the increased globalisation and influence of neoliberalism from the mid-1980’s onwards, the number of passengers per cruise vessel has more than quadrupled. At the same time, through mergers, takeovers and alliances, the global cruise market is now dominated by four major holdings, which also began to invest in tourist resorts and amenities at the embarkment points. Therewith the ESPON MSP-LSI report indicates the need for a higher Land-Sea Interaction of the cruise revenues in the host port cities. Cruise passengers tend to spend less money, on the visiting points especially, than land tourists do. Nevertheless, other studies have also pointed out the increasing impact of cruise tourism on the natural and heritable environment, subsequently stressing the need for the development of cruise tourism that protects the economic, socio-cultural and environmental interests in the coastal regions (ESPON MSP-LSI, 2019).

Finally, the current COVID-19 pandemic already has exerted a strong influence on cruise tourism in the 2020. Although the impact of the pandemic on the future development of this sector is still unsure, the question remains whether the pandemic could act as a game changer in this respect, or whether we will return to the pre-pandemic situation in the post-COVID era.

Registration link

Presentations from the event

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Documents

Pre-event brief - ESPON peer learning workshop on the future of cruise tourism in the Adriatic Sea.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 375KB

1 - Presentation Dave Shaw.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 1.04MB

2 - Presentation Erik Gloerson.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 165KB

3 - Presentation Luc Renaud.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 1.31MB

4 - Presentation Igor Linkov.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 4.14MB

Post-event brief - ESPON peer learning workshop on the future of cruise tourism in the Adriatic Sea.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 883KB

Topic paper - Tourism.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 3.39MB