From May 30th 2022 to June 3rd 2022 KU Leuven was the host to the biannual academic conference of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, bringing together highly established tourism scholars such as prof. Dan Fesenmaier, prof. Larry Dwyer, prof. Bob McKercher, prof. Ulrike Gretzel, prof. Scott McCabe, prof. Pauline Sheldon, prof. Stefan Gössling and many others. The SmartCulTour project was presented as part of the main conference programme by Astrid Dickinger of Modul University, with a presentation on “Research avenues to contribute to the future of tourism” and by Bart Neuts, with a presentation on “Supporting regional tourism development through community-driven ideation”.
Furthermore, as part of the conference, on June 2nd the SmartCulTour consortium organized a first sub-regional workshop on the tools and methods developed within the Horizon 2020 programme to support stakeholder engagement and community-supported development of cultural tourism initiatives. Jeroen Klijs of Breda University of Applied Sciences presented the general introduction to the SmartCulTour project while Bart Neuts of KU Leuven presented the design process crafting stages and the double-diamond design model, as well as destination design roadmapping. Dario Bertocchi of Ca’Foscari University gave an overview of the SmartCulTour Platform and Simone Moretti of Breda University of Applied Sciences presented the dynamic House of Quality for supporting decision-making. Finally Bert Smit and Jessika Weber, both also from Breda University of Applied Sciences, gave a video presentation, respectively on systems and visitor flow mapping and on the SmartCulTour Game.
The session was presented live and also streamed online through KU Leuven’s institutional streaming service. Participants included interested parties from European cultural and tourism networks, local cultural heritage networks, academic institutions and knowledge centres, and regional DMOs.