Destination Europe Summit: Tackling overtourism & building a sustainable tourism economy

euronews (in English)

At the Destination Europe Summit 2025, industry leaders and policy makers discussed solutions for sustainable tourism, tackling seasonality, overtourism and the environmental challenges facing Europe's top destinations.

Transcript

00:00Europe runs historically in six months out of 12 and that means that in a very short

00:11period of time, there is masses of travelers from all around the world that visit this,

00:16the tiniest continent in the world, I think of the second smallest, that gets the highest

00:19number of visitors.

00:20We have to have dedicated line for financing in the tourism because sustainability is costing.

00:30Europe remains the first tourist destination in the world, but to remain competitive, the

00:39continent must face many challenges.

00:41The sector of European tourism was reunited in Brussels for the Destination Europe Summit

00:462025, co-organized by Euronews and the European Travel Commission.

00:50If growth returns to its levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, professionals and political

00:55decision-makers want to meet the current challenges of sustainable tourism.

00:59When it comes to making tourism more sustainable, that fits into the bigger agenda of the European

01:05Union to make sure that all economic activities diminish the impact on climate.

01:12We need to work with small companies when it comes to circular economy, when it comes

01:18to dealing with waste, when it comes to organizing tourism in such a way that those who do tourism,

01:26those tourists have this reassurance that what they do is actually good for the climate

01:31and environment.

01:32The political world emphasizes that sustainable tourism, one of the key themes of the event,

01:37must be based on three pillars, the economy, the environment and employment, and for this

01:42we need financial resources.

01:44So it means that we are fighting with the over-tourism, we are fighting with seasonality,

01:49we are fighting with shortage of housing for the young families in the tourist destinations,

01:55we are fighting with climate changes, we have the problem with the local communities obviously.

02:00The European Commission emphasizes that 17 billion euros have been transferred from the

02:05EU budget to Member States for tourism.

02:08This envelope is added to that of the national authorities.

02:12One of the challenges raised during the first debate of this Destination Europe Summit is

02:17to limit the phenomenon of over-tourism.

02:19Questioned on the margins of this round table, Greek professionals believe that it is necessary

02:24to invest to convince tourists to leave the beaten path.

02:30The regions in Greece that are very much well developed touristically, for instance the

02:35south-eastern, which is basically the islands of the Aegean, their gross product is 90% from

02:43tourism industry, while other areas it's very low.

02:46So what we are trying to do, as I said earlier, are trying to fix the infrastructure, rebrand

02:53those areas to make them accessible to tourism so we can bring their level up.

03:01Another development axis to facilitate access and travel is to extend the tourist season

03:07in Europe.

03:08The challenge is to be able to offer activities throughout the year for the benefit of all

03:14actors.

03:18It's very important to spread those tourism visitors across the year to make sure that

03:24communities and the hosts that are benefiting from this tourism and those visits can actually

03:31do that on a full year scale and not just in a short period.

03:34That creates crowd, creates impact, very negative impact on the ecosystems, the environment,

03:40the housing and everything else.

03:43The growth of sustainable tourism is inseparable from a more sustainable transport.

03:47The aviation sector is often outlawed, but it's through airports that 2.5 billion passengers

03:52arrived in Europe last year.

03:54One of the tracks mentioned during the event by the airports is misery, among other things,

03:59on the multinodality to reduce their CO2 emissions.

04:02It's important because of two things.

04:04First, because of the sustainability imperative, because when you look at access to and from

04:09the airports from the local communities, that usually contributes up to 50% of the emissions

04:15that are due to the airport operations.

04:17So it's very important for airports to be connected and well connected to the public

04:21transport network because that's a way of reducing emissions and becoming more efficient

04:25in accessing the airport.

04:28The participants at the Destination Europe Summit 2025 were able to share their experiences

04:33and their expectations for the sector.

04:35Many of them consider it important to strengthen the European brand to highlight the assets

04:41and the tourist diversity of the entire continent.

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