EU Commissioner Meets NECSTouR President

The Network of European Regions for Sustainable and Competitive Tourism (NECSTouR) President, Peter De Wilde, met with the European Union (EU) Commissioner, Thierry Breton, during European Tourism Day 2023 organized in Brussels by the European Commission.

During the meeting, the gentlemen exchanged views on supporting the European Tourism Policy to tackle the sector challenges and opportunities through multilevel tourism governance. They shared a common belief in the positive power of tourism, and they discussed the main tourism territorial challenges, such as how to retain the workforce in the sector and the need to offer jobs that respond to customers’ needs and employees’ values, especially focusing on young generations. The tourism industry is responsible for 27 million jobs in Europe.

Breton and De Wilde agree that optimizing the collaboration between nations, regions, and cities as well as the EU is crucial to tackling European tourism’s governance fragmentation. They  support the creation of a coalition of the willing and the bringing together of public forces from different levels to make the the tourism transition pathway more effective in inspiring and sustaining all the SMEs, professionals, volunteers, and all those who believe in tourism as one of the means to facilitate “Better Places to Live, Better Places to Visit.”

In the framework of the Board of Directors Meeting and European Tourism Day, NECSTouR organized a thematic workshop “Empowering Destination Leaders to Deliver Sustainability” in Visit Flanders house in Brussels on scaling-out regenerative tourism governance and learning effective approaches to decarbonizing tourism activity. Participants came from all over Europe.