In the last week of September, more than 250 delegates from 43 countries reunited for a responsible future and joined the Green Destinations 2022 and Future of Tourism Coalition Summit in the beautiful city of Athens. The event connected sustainability professionals, businesses, destinations, universities, and tourism boards through good practices to support peer-to-peer learning and discover initiatives, tools, and solutions for our global challenges and goals. 🌍 What a feeling, not to have computer screens between us anymore!
What made this event even more special to us were the two sessions we held as Balkan Green – an initiative we formed with our partners in the region – Good Place from Slovenia, Green Visions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mustseedonia of North Macedonia and Spoonbill Nest from Albania – with the aim to connect key professionals working on the development of sustainable tourism in the region and form a strong, reliable, and professional network, work with globally recognised methods and tackle joint regional issues on sustainable development of tourism. 🌿
We held a panel discussion and a “World Cafe” workshop on sustainable development in the Balkan region, focusing on regional and national approaches for sustainable destination development, by providing good practice examples and discussing prerequisites and realities as well. More realities and recommendations were exchanged in the Round table “Global Leaders – National and Regional Initiatives” – the recording of it you can watch in the video here below. 🤓
Moreover, Balkan Green signed an agreement with Albert Salman, President of the Green Destinations Foundation: Balkan Green is now the official, full representative of Green Destinations for the Balkan region.💚 Special thanks goes to Economic Development, Governance and Enterprise Growth Project for recognizing and supporting our initiative.
A “sugar in the bottom” was surely the fact that Tivat, our pilot destination in Montenegro, is the 1st municipality in the Western Balkans to have started the sustainable development and monitoring process in 2020, passing its 1st international audit and getting recognised with the Green Destinations´ Bronze Award this year.🥉
