Endowed with €1.1 million, a six-year Interreg project titled "Lebenswerter Alpenraum" under the management of the Johannes Kepler University Linz will address these questions and more, questions that are of particular importance to a leading tourist destination such as Austria.

Interreg is a joint initiative by the European Regional Development Fund. Under the direction of Dr. Herta Neiß (Tourism Management at the JKU’s Institute for Social and Economic History), "Lebenswerter Alpenraum" aims to create participatory solutions to support sustainable tourism in the German-Austrian alpine region.

The cross-border partnership with various project partners (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences - Mario Jooss, Rosenheim University of Technology - Andreas Straube, hublz - Barbara Pölzleithner, hey.bayern - Hans Wembacher, Chiemgau Tourismus - Stephan Semmelmayr, Inner Salzkammergut Tourism Association - Christan Schirlbauer, Cultural Capital 2024 - Stefan Heinisch, Salzkammergut Tourismus und Marketing Ltd. - Michael Spechtenhauser, and Upper Austrian Tourismus - Doris Rom) has been going strong for over three years.

Community Involvement
Dr. Herta Neiß remarked: "We need to develop innovative approaches that will not only create solutions to address more sustainable tourism developments, but also focus culturally on regions included in the study (Upper Austria, Salzburg and Bavaria). The regional population’s needs should align with tourism developments. As part of our workshops and a large-scale survey, we aim to learn more about what the local population wants so we can incorporate this information into the project."

Different Regions, Similar Challenges
The participating regions have a somewhat comparable baseline of a high volume of tourism and selective peak times. The goal is to overcome these challenges by expanding existing attractions and making them more interesting and appealing. One of many new ideas would be to add new types of experiences and present them on a digital, interactive platform. In an effort to promote travel to the respective regions, the digital platform could feature, for example, 360° videos, interactive games, or even augmented reality applications to take visitors through virtual worlds as avatars.

Dr. Neiß added: "We want to tap into new groups of guests and get them more interested in visiting the participating regions." The idea is to make tourism more resilient in the face of random events.

The partners plan to launch their ideas during a major symposium scheduled for the fall of 2023 in the Salzkammergut regions and in cooperation with the 2024 Capital of Culture. The symposium will address tourism volume, peak times, as well as introduce some of innovative, future-oriented approaches to finding solutions.