CLUSTERATLAS4MED is taking the next step in exploring how rural tourism businesses and territories across the Mediterranean can strengthen local connections, create more value and build more resilient tourism economies. Building on the insights emerging from the Rural Living Labs, the project is now bringing a specialised Tourism Value Systems™ perspective into the development of the ATLAS Meta-Cluster Strategy.
As part of this process, GAMENG has been appointed as an external expert to support the CLUSTERATLAS4MED project. The objective is to add a specialised tourism value-systems perspective to the collective work of the partnership, helping to translate the needs, challenges and opportunities identified in the participating territories into strategic directions for the future CLUSTERATLAS Meta-Cluster.
GAMENG works with destinations and regions to develop what it defines as Tourism Value Systems™: connected tourism systems in which visitors, businesses, governance and local communities are considered as parts of the same value-creation process.
GAMENG’s approach focuses on understanding how value moves within a destination: how local businesses participate in the tourism economy, where connections between actors are missing, where part of the economic value generated by tourism may leave the territory, and how a greater share of that value can remain within local economies. That includes areas that are particularly relevant to CLUSTERATLAS4MED, such as value-system mapping, reducing value leakage, strengthening the market and export readiness of SMEs, connecting tourism products and experiences, and exploring governance structures that can strengthen cooperation between public and private actors around shared objectives.
This perspective is closely connected to the ambition of CLUSTERATLAS4MED: not simply to establish a network of rural tourism actors, but to build a Meta-Cluster capable of creating stronger connections between businesses, territories and support organisations across the Mediterranean.
The starting point for GAMENG’s contribution is the work already undertaken by the CLUSTERATLAS4MED partnership through the Rural Living Labs across the participating territories.
These processes are providing the project with direct evidence about the needs of rural tourism SMEs, existing local capacities, barriers to cooperation and opportunities for developing stronger tourism ecosystems.
GAMENG’s external expertise will help the partnership analyse this knowledge from a value-system perspective and further explore key questions: How are rural SMEs connected to the wider tourism economy? How can cooperation between local actors be improved? How can more tourism-generated value remain in rural areas? And which services could the future Meta-Cluster provide to make businesses and territories stronger and better connected?
The collaboration therefore brings additional specialised knowledge into a process that remains firmly rooted in the work of the entire CLUSTERATLAS4MED partnership and its territories.
By combining local evidence, partnership expertise and a specialised Tourism Value Systems™ perspective, the project aims to develop an ATLAS Meta-Cluster Strategy that can translate territorial needs into concrete opportunities for cooperation, stronger SMEs and more resilient rural tourism ecosystems across the Mediterranean.
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