UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM CHOICES. A EUROPEAN NETWORK CASE STUDY

The scope of this paper is to assess how prominent European tourist cities envisage a sustainable tourism approach, one that manages to balance the needs of city residents and municipality, of tourists and of tourism industry. It gathers evidence from 10 European tourist cities that have formed in 2019 the "Tourism-friendly Cities" network under the European Union's URBACT programme and are expected to work together until 2022 to develop local actions plans for supporting sustainable tourism practices. The first section focuses on a brief overview on the growing importance of the tourism sector for the local and global economy and the emerging challenges in cities, while the following section is looking on how cities are designing ways to address these challenges. The final section presents the implications and conclusions of these challenges and how they are experienced by this idiosyncratic group of cities.