BEST MED online platform
New IT tool to gather tourist data for cultural routes addressed to allow efficient monitoring of social, economic, and environmental outcomes created by Best Med Project (Interreg Mediteran), by partner University of Maribor Faculty of Tourism in colaboration with researchers from FERI UM.
One of the main objectives of Best Med Project is to increase the availability and strategic use of necessary data and information in the tourism sector by creating comparable and usable data collections and making them accessible. The online platform made in the framework of the project efficiently targets this objective as it provides an easy-to-use IT tool to gather data for cultural routes and allows efficient monitoring of social, economic, and environmental outcomes and impacts of the cultural routes while encouraging sustainable tourism and better policy planning.
The platform is built on an existing MITOMED+ online common open platform (https://mitomedplus.andalucia.org/mitomedplus/index.html) that provides the interactive part of the platform by allowing a user-friendly interface to access the information. An important functionality of the online platform is the directly comparable presentation of the Eurostat data. Each destination of the cultural route is graphically represented with the representation of the Eurostat data on the regional or national level which is automatically pulled from the existing Eurostat databases. Core indicators were chosen from available Eurostat data to provide evidence-based context to the cultural route’s operations. The main functionality of the online platform is the self-assessment form for the managers of the cultural routes that enables monitoring of the sustainable practices of the particular part of an individual cultural route. The self-assessment form consists of four main categories, all revolving around sustainability: Sustainable Management, Economic Sustainability, Socio-Cultural Sustainability, and Environmental Sustainability.
The tool combines these three functionalities with the data indicators provided and this allows better decision making and evidence-based planning.
