Local communities and tourism development. The TRIM project

One of the fundamental principles of sustainable development in a local perspective is the regard for territorial vocations and cultural identity of places, a target reachable by the involvement of local community in a lead role in endogenous ways to development, so that the territory will be rescued from speculative and de-individualizing external forces or from marginalization caused by international competition. This paper illustrates the TRIM project, aimed to promote rural tourism in the inland areas of three Mediterranean islands: Sardinia, Cyprus and Malta. It was carried out by CTS (a major Italian tourist and environmental association) on behalf of a consortium of Sardinian LAGs in the framework of the EC initiative Leader+. It involved a multidisciplinary team of researchers and two operators dedicated to the promotion of sustainable tourist packages. The project aimed at safeguarding places identity while offering the local communities true opportunities for development, by designing and marketing a competitive tourist offer. These rural areas are close to well known seaside resorts; even though, they still hold prominent rural features, where traditional activities and products survive in a wonderful context with some point of excellence (eg. the Barumini Nuraghe, a World Heritage Site). From a tourist point of view, Sardinian inland areas shows some critical features which are common to most rural contexts: - Inadequate infrastructures - Enterprises unevenly distributed and faraway from each other - Small size facilities with few beds - Poor offer of leisure and sports activities - Individualism/no practice in cooperation - Poor tourist and enterprise culture Nevertheless, starting from an in-depth analysis of the territories, the productive threads and the enterprises to be involved, through a network approach, it is possible to overcome the limits of such socio-economic fabric, thus: - Increasing accommodation capacity and offering integrated tourism services - Improving promotion and selling opportunities in a co-marketing perspective - Exchanging experiences and know-how - Offering a variety of products with common quality standards The project aim is to ride parochialisms out and create a network between touristic operators looking at the market tendencies and respecting the environment and the local culture.