The session, organised within the framework of the European Capitals of Tourism competition and in cooperation with IREST (Institut de recherche et d'études supérieures du tourisme), brought European Commission representatives together with Tampere, the 2026 European Capital of Smart Tourism, and Dubrovnik, the 2026 European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism, at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Tampere walked students through how it prepared for and won its title, detailing its main policies and flagship projects, while Dubrovnik shared its approach to managing overtourism and destination governance, a topic the city has had to confront directly given its long-standing struggles with visitor pressure on its historic core.

A roundtable moderated between the two cities and the students explored what actually makes a tourism strategy convincing today, weighing competitiveness, sustainability, governance and innovation against each other rather than treating them as separate boxes to tick. The European Commission framed the session as a way to introduce the next generation of tourism managers to EU tourism policy and real-world practice side by side, positioning the competition itself as a bridge between European policy, winning cities and the students who will eventually run tourism destinations themselves.

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