White Paper EU Smart Destinations

The European Strategy of Smart Destinations aims to transform tourism across Europe by leveraging digital innovation, sustainable practices, and active community engagement. In the short term, the strategy focuses on modernizing infrastructure, enhancing digital services, and establishing a common framework for measuring progress. In the long term, its objectives include ensuring sustainable growth, improving climate resilience, fostering innovation, and strengthening the global reputation of European destinations.

This strategy does not depart from scratch, having as a baseline the Tourism Transition Pathway, but also key projects as the EU Competence Centre, and the European Tourism Data Space, as well as other initiatives as the EU Tourism Dashboard.

A key element of this strategy is the development of a standardized European methodology and a common set of indicators. This ensures consistency in how destinations are assessed and enables reliable benchmarking across regions. Such standardization facilitates the sharing of best practices, more effective policy-making, and transparent monitoring of progress towards strategic goals. It also helps attract investments by providing clear and comparable data on destination performance, sustainability, and visitor satisfaction.