Our Intermediterranean and Islands Commissions, together with several technical partners and Tourism Observatories in the Mediterranean, are working to create a Network of Mediterranean Observatories on Sustainable Tourism (Med NSTO). This work is being supported by an EU territorial cooperation project, BEST MED, funded by Interreg Med Programme. This project is producing an info hub and will deliver a road map describing the next steps to create the NSTO by the end of 2022. 

Our organization, including some of our member regions (e.g. in Italy and Spain) in particular are especially engaged in this process and will keep working after the project’s conclusion to set up this Network of observatories with the idea to bring together the main parties to share ideas, techniques and tools on data/indicators, and to build multi-level cooperation in order to seek better joint solutions and work in a common direction. 

Hopefully for 2025 we will have consolidated the current embryo of network of observatories, linking up with INSTO from UN WTO, the Glasgow Declaration and other initiatives/EC actions, indeed contributing to the EU Pathway and topic 3 and in particular to harmonised data collection, improving access to data for official statistics and including key sustainability indicators on the basis of the work already done in the past and in concrete projects such as BEST MED, Mitomed +, Co-Evolve, among others. 

It’s difficult to look further than 2025. This is a work in progress that will depend on the will and resources of all involved parties and on the support coming from EU funding streams which we are already applying for to the relevant cooperation programmes in the framework of open call for proposals (e.g. call for governance projects Euro-Med Interreg). 

If this experience works, we don’t exclude to assess the possibility to replicate it in other sea basins or in any case to extrapolate useful results for the benefit of other EU regions within our membership/EU Tourism transition pathway implementation. 

On a more general note, if any discussion on data/indicators is foreseen at EU level involving the regions our organization will be happy to liaise and provide representatives/experts from our member regions and their observatories. Also as a network we have a vocation to establish synergies with the foreseen tourism stakeholder collaboration platform and other platforms and initiatives.