Dr George Cassar from the Institute for Tourism, Travel and Culture at the University of Malta recently presented a co-authored paper on sustainable tourism and a situation analysis of the Cultural Destination of Mdina, the pilot location being studied by ITTC for the current Heland project.

The conference held in Athens, Greece with the theme 'Forms and Norms of Tourism and Culture in the Age of Innovation', addressed an audience composed mainly of scholars, researchers, policy makers, tourism professionals and IT personnel.

In his presentation, Dr Cassar outlined the main tourism positive and negative economic, social, and cultural impacts on the 'silent' city and assessed the use of ICT in cultural heritage management sites.

Commenting about this event, Dr Cassar said, "it was an interesting opportunity to present this paper, co-authored by myself, Dr Nadia Theuma, Ms Sarah Faith Azzopardi and Ms Giusy Cardia, where we could illustrate our findings related to how tourism has impacted Mdina in the past twenty years or so and how Mdina's residents have had to adapt to the growing tourism activity. Tourism activity in Mdina is leaving its share of positive impacts such as an attractive tourism economic activity while the tourism enterprises within the city are seeking to become more accessible to visitors in particular through the use of ICT, thus making the local tourism industry more sustainable. However, Mdina's tourist offer needs to be updated to be able to deliver a reinvented product which respects the fragile and unique character of this city by minimising unavoidable adverse impacts."

Now in its third year, the Heland Project seeks to achieve balance and sustainability on which to build and develop future tourism policies. The project is about to announce a set of core and optional sustainable tourism indicators, a first for Malta, to assess the destination performance, identify areas that need improvement and to establish a holistic approach to tourism planning and the development of tourism related policies that would act as a tool for sustainable destination management in Mdina and beyond. 

The Heland Project is being implemented in collaboration with other Mediterranean partners from Malta, Lebanon, Jordan, the State of Palestine, Spain and Cyprus, coming from educational organisations, such as universities, and research centres.

IACUDIT is a non-profit organisation that fosters a network of people, projects and events aimed at discussing and promoting cultural and digital tourism.