Ravenna
FOOTPRINTS - Facilitation, Organization, Opportunities into a Tourists'/Temporary citizens’ urban Platform, Nudging Responsible behaviours, community Involvement, Time saving by Soft mobility
About the project
FOOTPRINTS' objectives are:
- Enhancing sustainability, attractiveness and innovation;
- Reorganising Ravenna as a default sustainable destination, reducing its ecological footprint, ensuring economic viability, and improving residents' quality of life while preventing overcrowding;
- Ensuring the long-term viability of the “Ravenna sustainable destination by default” model.
The FOOTPRINTS project is named after an acronym whose meaning is to ask tourists (the demand), entrepreneurs and attractions (the supply) to leave a lighter footprint while enjoying or organising a visit to the city. The main challenge is to preserve the authenticity of a sustainable visit, supporting the culture of leaving light footprints and behaving as temporary citizens.
The city aims to create a system that integrates tourist supply and demand, involving local entrepreneurs, tourists and visitors, through communication and nudging digital technology. The project foresees the realisation of three soft mobility hubs in three different areas of the territory: the city centre, seaside and liminal border area close to the wetlands . The project is designed to support the local transport system and a spread bike network as well as designing and constructing urban corridors and living spaces. These places are destined to become iconic for sustainable choices.
The innovative aspect of this solution is the involvement of tourist entrepreneurs and tourists in a new model – intended as a game and a digital tool – to enhance sustainability, and preserve the authenticity of the experience. Tourists will be considered as temporary citizens, with a campaign to enrol them as ambassadors, developing a digital game to nudge sustainable behaviours, leading entrepreneurs toward green certification paths.
Challenges
Tourists visit Ravenna, on the North-East Italian coast, for its landscapes, beaches, heritage, gastronomy, festivals and sports events. Alongside its existing seaside tourism, art tourism is growing, and nature tourism is starting up in response to ever-increasing demands.
Ravenna wants its tourism to be more sustainable, attractive and innovative.
The main challenge is to preserve the authenticity of a sustainable visit, with tourists leaving light footprints, behaving as temporary citizens
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Accessibility, mobility, digital facilities, integration, and flow management have been identified as areas of improvement for Ravenna’s tourism offer
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There is a need to reduce tourism’s ecological footprint across Ravenna’s territory, ensuring economic viability, increasing residents’ quality of life, and preventing overcrowding
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How to ensure the “Ravenna sustainable destination by default” model continues in the long run?
Proposed solutions
The FOOTPRINTS solution is based on collaborative governance. It is set to enable and empower Ravenna’s community to provide and organise sustainable, integrated solutions and facilities that are attractive, smart, green, inclusive and viable. It aims to welcome and take tourists towards responsible choices through a set of mechanisms based on gaming, nudging and community engagement. In this way each tourist becomes a TEMPORARY CITIZEN, with an identity, needs, preferences, rights and duties.
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Engage, accompany and speed up the tourism value chain transformation involving both public and private organisations. Such changes include the further development of high quality, sustainable and authentic place-based services
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Combining physical and digital approaches, build a new inclusive tourist ecosystem with organised, integrated, user-oriented solutions to nudge responsible tourism and inclusion
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Enable the tourism ecosystem, together with residents, to engage and satisfy tourists as temporary citizens. This includes imagining and using new model governance and working methods for an effective process
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Model data management and analysis for continuous assessment, improvement and redesign of the tourist offer
Milestones
Start of communication and marketing campaign to invite influencers and tourists to Ravenna
Implementation and maintenance of the welcome hubs system and accessibility solutions
Testing of the outputs by influencers and selected tourists
Free sustainable experiences for tourists; capitalisation events for experts