Webinar #3 | 7th May 2025 | What does cultural sustainability mean for destinations and communities?
Tourism’s cultural sustainability for destinations and communities: insights and lessons
As part of the WeNaTour webinar series, the third session titled “What does cultural sustainability mean for destinations and communities?” was delivered on May 7th, featuring presentations on the critical role of tangible and intangible culture in travel, tourism’s impacts on local traditions, and opportunities for enhancing local culture through tourism.
Are you taking part in the WeNaTour E-learning Course? We encourage you to download and use this reflection template to start capturing your key learning points from the webinar. This and other resources will also be available on our dedicated e-learning platform.
Key Takeaways
Here are some of the key lessons shared in the webinar and important takeaways.
- Sustainable cultural tourism requires destinations to effectively work with local communities towards achieving a good balance of economic opportunities and preserving authenticity.
- Local communities should actively participate in designing cultural tourism experiences in a way that helps maintain their cultural identities in a dignified manner.
- Traditional cultural and natural landscapes play a critical role in both social and environmental sustainability, and tourism, when done well, can offer significant opportunities for strengthening traditional practices that otherwise face decline. On the other hand, loss of cultural practices also significantly affect local communities’ abilities to benefit from tourism.
- For an objective evaluation of the effectiveness of our sustainability efforts, destinations need concrete, relevant and meaningful KPIs to measure and monitor cultural (as well as social and environmental) sustainability impacts and benefits.
This webinar has been developed and delivered by:
- Ayako Ezaki, TrainingAid
- Adina Nicoleta Candrea, Transilvania University of Braso
- Michael Jungmeier, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
- Christopher Gruber, Nassfeld Lesachtal Weißensee
Watch the Webinar Recording
Additional Details
The webinar series is part of the WeNaTour e-Learning Programme, and the students enrolled in our course will have access to all the proceedings of each webinar, including the video recordings, presentation slides, and follow-up Q&A. In addition to the lessons shared via the webinar, there will be further resources, examples and tools to help you improve your skills.
Enrollment is free and open to any students or professionals interested in learning about sustainable tourism and destination management practices incorporating welfare, nature and innovation in tourism.
To learn more about the e-learning offer and to enrol, please click here.
Discover the case study
The destination example by Nassfeld Lesachtal Weissensee (Austria) and Colinele Transilvaniei (Romania)have also been shared as a WeNaTour case study, take a look!
Join the WeNaTour Webinar Series
Each session is organized by Etifor | Valuing Nature and TrainingAid and features speakers from organisations including Etifor, SanoTouring, Transilvania University of Brasov, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Nature Tourism Development and Destination Management Organizations like Valsugana Lagorai (Italy), Garda Trentino (Italy), Nassfeld Lesachtal Weißensee (Austria), San Vigilio di Marebbe (Italy).
Full programme at this link
