The OPEN TOURISM third workshop "New approach to sustainable tourism development " was held on 2 July 2021 at the Mak Albania Hotel. 

OPEN TOURISM aims at enhancing cultural and natural resources to promote a sustainable tourism, at spreading the concept of ecological and responsible tourism, at creating synergies with other economic sectors for an overall local development from the economic and social point of view, at empowering local communities for the preservation of territorial excellences. OPEN TOURISM will also use new technologies for virtual meetings and will schedule transnational meetings in order to optimize travels.

Mr. Florian Bilali, the executive director of CEDIR, presented the Open Tourism main outputs, which are Open Tourism brand, Open Tourism itineraries, APP and a contest for tourists. These workshops will support the use of project outputs, increase synergies between different sectors and territories, and encourage more stakeholders to participate in Open Tourism processes.

Mr. Leonard Maci , the Marketing Director of GP Travel, explained the role of tourism industry and said that their direction is to create a balance between state, market, and society organizations by improving services that respect market and tourist social and economic needs and demands.

Mrs. Brikela Bejko, the Executive Director of AOTE, talked about sustainable development tourism nowadays and how it will affect tourism in the future. In contrast to mass tourism, which involves huge groups of people engaged in organised or packaged trips, the concept of sustainable tourist development evolved.

The stakeholders were really interested to cooperate with each other, to be part of the Open Tourism project (and other similar projects) and to share more ideas on how to improve tourism in the future.

At the end, the Open Tourism stakeholders discussed the challenges of tourism and how to have good cooperation for the recovery of the tourism sector.