The Kythera tourism project was presented as a methodological approach and experience at the most pertinent conference for the development of digital culture in Greece. Responding to the simultaneous challenges facing the Greek countryside, such as abandonment, the digital gap, the climate crisis and over-tourism, new, participatory and effective models of tourism are sought, exploiting the potential of digital tools to address them.
More specifically, in the context of the 5th Panhellenic Conference on Digitization of Cultural Heritage, the announcement of the scientific paper “Digital tools for the formation of a new, smart and sustainable tourism model: the case of Kythera” was made on March 7, at the Municipal Gallery of Larissa – Museum “G.I. Katsigras”. The paper was edited by Rigas Zafeiriou, coordinator of the Sustainable Food Systems programme at MedINA, Athina Fatsea, PhD Candidate at the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpretation and at the UNESCO Chair on Threats to Cultural Heritage at the Ionian University and Dr. Maria-Constantina (Maritina) Leontsini, PhD in the Department of Economics and Sustainable Development at Harokopio University and in the Department of Italian Language and Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Many initiatives for the documentation, digitization and promotion of tangible and intangible cultural heritage from academia, local government, state and other institutions were presented at the conference. The conference was organized by the Cyprus University of Technology (Laboratory of Digital Cultural Heritage – UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage and EU-ERA Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage), the University of West Attica (Laboratory of the Department of Industrial Design and Production Engineering – School of Engineering) and the Cultural Organization “PERRAIVIA Network”, with the contribution of many other institutions, under the auspices of the President of the Republic Mrs. Katerina Sakellaropoulou and His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew.
In the near future, the abstracts, all the video presentations and the minutes with the full papers will be published. We would like to thank the scientific committee of the conference for the positive evaluation of the paper and the organizing committee for the excellent organization.