How to Boost Regional Cultural Tourism? EMY Delivers Answers

The fourth partner meeting took place in early October 2026 in Maniago (Friuli Venezia Giulia), bringing together all actors involved in the EMY project. The core focus was the reflection on the Cross-Border Learning Experience held in early September. For one week, Gen Z youth explored innovative, interactive museum offerings across Italy and Tyrol, bringing the EMY project goals to life: inspiring young people for culture and museums while fostering cross-border exchange.

In the following days, the final events of the cross-border workshop series were held in the partner municipalities of Maniago (Friuli Venezia Giulia) and Montebelluna (Veneto). Developed by Università Ca' Foscari Venice (UNIVE) and HOK | University of Applied Sciences Kufstein Tirol, the workshops were led by Prof. (FH) Dr. Verena Teissl, Professor of Cultural Management & Cultural Studies at HOK. The thematic focus centered on developing local cultural and creative tourism, as well as building regional networks between cultural institutions and tourism boards. The objective was to bring together stakeholders from various local and regional organizations to discuss strategic collaboration across culture, tourism, and politics.

Three Levels of Integrating Culture into Tourism

The first part of the workshop provided background knowledge on cooperation and networking in cultural tourism. A key characteristic highlighted was that culture must be viewed as a process that develops authentically and in diverse forms within a region, going far beyond the idea of culture as merely a side product of a tourism strategy. Culture enables vibrant and authentic access to a region's history and present.

Culture as such can be integrated into regional tourism on three different levels. On the first level, culture plays a subordinate role and is, at most, mentioned by tourism organizations through individual events or cultural sites. On the second level, a specific conception of culture is incorporated into the tourism strategy, which often does not reflect the authentic, contemporary cultural landscape, but rather focuses on a mostly conservative, traditional cultural heritage. On the third level, the contemporary cultural landscape as a whole is proactively integrated into the tourism strategy, actively shaping the region’s identity.

Cooperation and Networks Between Culture and Tourism

The second part of the workshop functioned as an interactive format to connect participants in different networks. Network types known from science served as a framework for group formation.

• Culture – Culture Network: Representatives from various cultural organizations gathered to discuss existing or necessary networks, communication channels, and collaborations to enrich joint work and enable mutual support and learning as cultural actors.
• Culture – Tourism Network: Representatives from cultural organizations and tourism boards came together. A key element in this collaboration is understanding and mediating the different approaches, perspectives, and goals of both cultural professionals and tourism experts. Mutual understanding opens the door to fruitful collaboration.
• Culture – Tourism – Politics Network: Participants actively addressed the power dynamics among different stakeholders, discussing how complex, holistic collaboration can strengthen regional culture, tourism, and the region as a whole.

The workshop modules resonated strongly across the partner regions and effectively reconnected participants. It was particularly gratifying to observe stakeholders who had not previously interacted connect productively to discuss potential future collaborations.

What´s Next:

On November 17, this workshop will also take place in Innsbruck. We cordially invite everyone involved in culture, tourism, and politics who wishes to network, analyze existing collaborations, or take their joint initiatives to the next level. The focus will be on central questions such as: How do we want to be perceived? What topics does our region stand for? How do we want to work together?

The workshop is also open to anyone seeking an introduction to the topic and initial experience in cross-sector collaboration between culture, tourism, and politics. Thanks to funding from Interreg Italy-Austria, participation is free of charge – Click HERE to register.

Links:

• Cultural and creative tourism: Cooperation as the key to success | Registration link
• Project EMY | Research project