Regenerative tourism experiences in the Grand Tour of Catalonia

Within the experience framework of the Grand Tour of Catalonia, a tourist route promoted by the Catalan Tourist Board (recognised by the acronym ACT from Agència Catalana de Turisme) that covers every corner of the region and its heritage by vehicle and in sections, the possibility of identifying regenerative and social return projects in the territory was raised in order to evaluate their incorporation into the itinerary. In this way, the objective would be to broaden the commitment of the project with innovative elements in sustainability, and to reinforce the positive impacts on the territory through the collaboration and involvement of consumers-tourists-excursionists in this type of product.

The three specific objectives of the project, set by ACT, were:

1. To establish the basis for the definition of the concept “regenerative experience product (peR)” with its implications and tourism potential, in order to classify and categorize it.
2. To build an inventory of these products and experiences in the surroundings of the sections of the Grand Tour Catalonia’s route.
3. To elaborate a proposal for the promotion and visualization of this product inventory in the setting of the Grand Tour Catalonia’s website.

To achieve the objectives set out above, Pax# organized the consultancy work in a scheme with three logical phases, following the general approach of the goals and needs of the project, and created an output that would thoroughly collect the results of the whole process under the name “Regenerating in route. Grand Tour Catalonia”.

For each of these three phases or steps, concrete actions were proposeds.

In a first instance, it was necessary to carry out an exhaustive research and background review of the main concepts that encompassed the aim of the project (regeneration, regenerative tourism, regenerative tourism experience, regenerative project, etc.) in order to provide a complete etymological definition from all of them, and to lay the foundations of the research.

Once the basic concepts of the project were defined, a methodological scheme was designed based on the 5 main requirements that a regenerative tourism experience or product must meet. This scheme would help us to identify and find the “peR”.

To begin to analyze the products, projects and experiences in the territory that could meet the characteristics of the methodological scheme developed, a consultation was carried out with the tourism technicians and the different Patronages of Catalonia, which helped us to have a considerable volume of proposals, in addition to those that had previously been identified by Pax#.

In this way, a database of 170 experiences and proposals in Catalonia was compiled, which were analyzed and processed one by one following the methodological outline.

The last step from the methodological process was to elaborate a proposal for the promotion and communication of the results obtained as a result of the research, in the setting of the Grand Tour Catalonia’s website.

The results of this project were a total of 8 regenerative tourism products-experiences identified in the territory, 14 sustainable projects with a high potential to become regenerative, in the absence of a little technical assistance, and a list of 39 aggregated sustainable tourism experiences of interest for other purposes.

The first mentioned (called Group A), recognized mainly in sections 1, 2 and 5 of the Grand Tour, could be marketed and promoted within the route, due to their high compliance with the requirements in regeneration and social return in the territory. The latter, recognized as Group B.1 and distributed along the different sections, only failed in one of the requirements; for this reason, they required prior assistance before they could be promoted together with those of Group A. Finally, the last ones (Group B.2), although they were tourism experiences that stood out for their efforts in sustainability, could not be marketed at least in this type of desired product.