The pilot ran from February 2025 to February 2026, selected from over 80 applications, a sign of how much appetite there is among destination organisations for practical support on data. The 40 participating DMOs, ranging from national tourism boards to municipal offices, were grouped into four thematic clusters: redistributing visitor flows, balancing residents and visitors, adapting to climate change, and supporting emerging destinations. Each cluster combined webinars, hands-on tool testing, and peer exchange, while destinations could also sit in on other clusters as observers.

The concrete output for each destination was an action plan: a set of priorities, chosen indicators, and next steps tailored to their own situation, developed through one-to-one mentoring with the D3HUB team over the summer and autumn of 2025. In parallel, the project tested a shared set of sustainability indicators across environmental, social and economic dimensions, aiming to let destinations eventually benchmark themselves against each other, though the report is candid that data comparability across countries remains a real obstacle.

The pilot wrapped up with a meeting in Brussels around European Tourism Day in January 2026, bringing participants together with European Commission representatives to review what worked and what still needs fixing before the concept scales up. Destinations flagged the webinars and expert mentoring as the most valuable parts of the programme, but also pointed to a gap between learning something in a workshop and being able to apply it independently afterwards. That feedback is now feeding directly into how the permanent Competence Centre gets designed.  

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