ReTour – Regenerative Tourism in the Baltic Sea Region

The ReTour project, which involves regions around the Baltic Sea, is a three-year collaboration aimed at developing new methods for regenerative tourism.

The project partners will explore, test, and share knowledge with the aim of developing a method for how places can create experiences that contribute to making a better place for both nature and people.

Facts
  • Project duration: 01.05.2024 – 01.04.2027
  • Budget: 1,877,594 EUR
  • Funding: Interreg – South Baltic Sea
  • Project owner: Sweden | Visit Skåne AB
  • Project Partners:
    • Denmark | Visit Lolland Falster
    • Lithuania | Association Klaipėda Region
    • Poland | Pomorskie Tourist Board and Western Pomerania Tourism Organisation
    • Germany | Institute for Tourism Research in Northern Europe (NIT)
What is regenerative tourism?

Regenerative tourism goes a step further than sustainability, which hopes to preserve a place for future use. Instead, we want to not only minimize the negative effects of tourism but leverage the positive impacts in a way that actively seeks to restore and regenerate the environment, cultures and communities. Regenerative tourism makes a place thrive which requires both a mindset change and a paradigm shift.

The project focuses on regenerative tourism experiences, which means creating experiences where tourism can contribute to a better place.

What’s happening in the project?

We will investigate the unique needs of certain places, develop and market new experiences both close to nature and within, for example, nature, gastronomy, and culture. This will be done in collaboration with various actors, such as municipalities, tourism businesses, and civil society. Discoveries and key findings are shared between partners in ReTour to shape the development of tourism offerings that contribute to creating concrete value for various tourism actors, communities, and small and medium-sized enterprises. The exact offerings are determined by the different conditions of each place.

The project’s activities are divided into four different work packages:

The first work package includes joint study trips to explore good practices, collaboration with stakeholders, and development of methods for regenerative tourism.

In the second work package, we will test and explore various tourism offerings where we identify opportunities and limitations. All partners test in their places based on their unique conditions so that we can develop the method together.

The third work package involves developing guiding principles for how to position a regenerative tourist destination in the southern Baltic Sea area, supported by PR activities and press trips.

The fourth work package is about anchoring and disseminating the new methods. A guide, a toolbox, and a joint action plan for positioning will be developed.

In all work packages of the project, we have a development perspective and an exploratory approach.

Why is collaboration important?

Regenerative tourism requires consideration of several aspects of sustainability. By identifying what a place needs, experiences can be developed that acknowledge important key challenges such as how environmental protection, cultural preservation, and economic development interact. It can, for example, involve creating unexpected tourism experiences where the conditions and specific needs of places and communities determine which experiences are developed. In this way, value is added to the place while giving visitors a more meaningful experience. To achieve this, different stakeholders such as local communities, businesses, non-profit organizations, and authorities need to collaborate.

Germany’s pilot

In Germany, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Tourism Association is an associated partner of the project and will work closely with the NIT to focus on the family holiday segment. Findings and important conclusions will be shared with other regions and countries as part of the ReTour project in order to shape the development of sustainable tourism offers. Collaboration is crucial for the success of regenerative tourism with its innovative strategies and methods for revitalising the local tourism sector.

Aims

Our aim is to develop a methodology and create a toolbox focusing on regenerative experiences for DMOs (Destination Management Organizations) working with the tourism industry. The method should be usable and adaptable to places with different circumstances. The project’s purpose is to achieve a common understanding and perspective on how tourism can contribute to strengthening and developing a place. Initially, it involves learning about how different places worldwide work with regenerative tourism. We will delve into already developed methods, as well as test completely new ones, with the aim of initiating a starting point where we test and learn what works in the South Baltic area.


The InterReg project Retour, involving regions around the Baltic Sea, is a three-year collaboration aimed at developing new methods for regenerative tourism. Partners from Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Denmark, along with associated partners, are working together to mitigate the impact of seasonality in tourism and sustain the local economy through regenerative tourism initiatives. Visit Skåne AB, Sweden is project lead.