About ToLearn

Sustainable Tourism in the North Sea Region:
Network-Project ToLearn under INTERREG IIIB NSR  

Around the North Sea tourism is concentrating mainly in the areas close to coast. Although these coastal regions face similar challenges in building up or improving their tourism business, there has been more competition than cooperation in the NSR tourism sector over the past years and decades. However, it seems obvious that joint efforts of several regions will be more successful than individual initiatives to overcome major problems typical for almost all North Sea tourism destinations, e.g. short seasons, decreased spending etc.

The project ToLearn is based on the concept of “Tourism Learning Areas in the EU”. It aims at analysing interregional and transnational learning processes in the field of tourism, thus identifying strategies which have proven successful in the development of sustainable tourism regionally or locally. The ToLearn approach focuses on three key issues:

1. providing a data and information base for recent trends and challenges in the North Sea tourism sector;
2. building up a communication network and platform that enables or strengthens trans-regional and transnational cooperation in tourism;
3. finding best-practise examples for tourism innovations in pilot regions and adopting such initiatives elsewhere.