What we achieve
The project deliverables is a series of documents co-created with project partners throughout the implementation process. These outputs are designed to support the project’s objectives by capturing shared knowledge, documenting methodologies and results, and providing practical resources for stakeholders. Developed through a collaborative approach, the deliverables ensure that the project’s outcomes are relevant, transferable, and aligned with the needs and expertise of all partners involved.
D1.1.1. CATALOG OF EXISTING TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS FOR REGENERATIVE TOURISM AND COMMUNITY-BASED PRACTICES
This document establishes a shared repository of 34 case studies to inspire regenerative tourism frameworks and foster transnational dialogue. The catalog addresses five thematic challenges, featuring 14 cases on challenging mainstream narratives, 9 on landscape heritage, 4 on urban cultural centers, 4 on suburban cultural centers, and 3 on overtourism. Throughout the analysis, heritage, community engagement, and active participation emerge as the most recurrent cross-cutting priorities. To address these challenges, the recorded interventions primarily leverage practical tools like placemaking, events, itineraries, and localized services. Ultimately, a strong majority of these projects (24 out of 34) target long-term impacts, positioning local residents and communities as the primary beneficiaries of these regenerative strategies.
D1.1.2. Elaboration of the Hyperlocal Design Framework
The European Commission frames regenerative tourism as a way of rebuilding a territory’s natural, social, and economic capital while protecting what makes it itself, and improving daily life for the people who live there. MED4REGEN’s method rests on a hyperlocal approach. We work at a small scale, a neighbourhood, a village, a valley, paying attention to things that usually go unnoticed: tangible and intangible heritage, the marks left by time, people’s stories, the relationships and shared imaginaries that hold a community together. Past, present, and future aren’t treated as separate stages but as part of a single cycle: a territory inherits something, reworks it, and passes it on.
The framework sets out four strategic areas, four verbs to guide anyone designing regenerative actions:
Repair — act where there has been damage, whether physical or social
Reconnect — build genuine ties between visitors, residents, and places
Re-engage — bring local actors into the process
Redistribute — make sure the benefits of tourism come back to the community, fairly
The document proposes a self-assessment tool for evaluating if a regenerative tourism idea is being developed according to the model, organised around six dimensions and the four regenerative actions: Heritage · Traces · Stories · Actions · Events · Imaginaries
Researchers, designers, and local stakeholders can use it to gauge how firmly a project is rooted in its territory and how well it puts the principles of regeneration into practice. It isn’t a score or a ranking. It works more like a mirror, showing where a project is strong and where there’s still room to grow.
D1.2.1. MED4REGEN map for regenerative cultural and tourism processes and stakeholders
This deliverable presents a shared analytical framework for identifying, understanding and connecting the actors involved in cultural and tourism ecosystems across MED4REGEN territories. Developed under the coordination of Open Tourisme Lab, it brings together the results of partner work on associated cultural sites, stakeholder mapping, focus groups and territorial analysis. It explores how cultural organisations, tourism actors, local communities, public authorities, SMEs and knowledge institutions interact around regenerative tourism challenges in diverse Mediterranean contexts, from heritage landscapes to urban, suburban and peri-urban cultural areas.
Its objective is to provide partners with a common knowledge base to design future regenerative tourism actions that are grounded in local realities. The deliverable combines methodological tools, qualitative findings and comparative analysis to identify key challenges, needs, barriers, assets and levers for action. It highlights issues such as fragmented governance, dominant tourism narratives, limited long-term funding, community participation, cultural mediation and the need to reconnect tourism with living territories. It also introduces visual and systemic mapping to clarify stakeholder roles, relationships and opportunities for cooperation.
This work is important because regenerative tourism cannot be built through isolated initiatives or top-down strategies alone. It requires a clear understanding of who is involved, how actors cooperate, where tensions exist and which conditions can enable collective action. For MED4REGEN partners and stakeholders, the deliverable offers a practical basis for aligning pilot actions, capacity-building activities and communication efforts. It helps ensure that future interventions are context-sensitive, participatory and capable of strengthening cultural vitality, social cohesion and long-term territorial resilience.
