Culturality INVTUR on April 20-22, 2027 in Aveiro, Portugal

The INVTUR 2027 International Conference and the European CULTURALITY Project are jointly organising, as part of the same event, two conferences of significant impact.

INVTUR 2027 | Tourism Futures in a World of Challenges

Tourism Futures in a World of Challenges brings together researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to explore how tourism can evolve amid accelerating uncertainty and disruption. From climate and biodiversity pressures to shifting consumer expectations and new patterns of mobility, the sector is being reshaped by forces that test its resilience while opening space for reinvention and impact-driven growth.

Centered on people and communities, the conference will highlight tourism’s social foundations: residents’ quality of life, decent work, inclusion, culture, and place identity. How destinations can create shared value, manage visitor pressures, strengthen local participation, and ensure that tourism development supports community wellbeing, fairness, and long-term legitimacy, will be analysed.

With a focus on management and technology, the conference will also address the tools and capabilities needed to navigate complexity and steer tourism transitions. Discussions will cover governance and strategy, measurement and performance, risk and crisis management, collaboration across economic blocs, and the opportunities and dilemmas created by data, platforms. The role played by Artificial Intelligence (AI) will also assume centre stage in the discussions. Together, these perspectives aim to shape actionable pathways for tourism futures that are innovative, responsible, and resilient.

CULTURALITY & Tourism. Designing Sustainable Paths

CULTURALITY & Tourism. Designing Sustainable Paths emerges from the collaboraIon between CULTURALITY and INVTUR, establishing a shared platform for interdisciplinary reflection on the future of sustainable tourism, cultural heritage and territorial development. Integrated within the broader framework of INVTUR, the conference seeks to expand discussions surrounding tourism through perspecives grounded in heritage studies, design, arts, sustainability, circular economy, regeneration, and creative practices fostering dialogue around the role of culture and local knowledge in shaping more sustainable and inclusive futures for rural and remote territories. CULTURALITY is a Horizon Europe research and innovation project bringing together mulidisciplinary consorium of 13 partners from 9 European countries, including universities, museums, cultural organisations, SMEs and community-based institutions. The project focuses on the valorisation of cultural heritage in rural and remote areas through participatory, creative and sustainable approaches capable of strengthening local communities and supporting new models of territorial regeneration. Grounded in the relashionship between cultural landscapes, traditional knowledge and contemporary creative practices, CULTURALITY explores how heritage can operate not only as a legacy of the past, but also as a living resource for innovation, community empowerment and sustainable development. In this context, the project promotes the establishment of new systems of territorial support based on local cultural specificities, including collaborative networks, entrepreneurial opportunities, visibility trategies, community and heritage-based methodologies and models for cultural and tourism innovation. Aligned with these objectives, the conference theme proposes an understanding of tourism as part of wider cultural, social and territorial ecosystems shaped by memory, identity, participation, creativity and situated forms of knowledge. Particular attention will therefore be given to the ways in which traditional crafts, oral traditions, gastronomy, music, vernacular knowledge and cultural landscapes can contribute to more resilient and inclusive models of territorial development while simultaneously generating social, cultural and economic value for local communities. The event will also critically address the tensions emerging between preservation and transformation, authenticity and innovation, local identity and global tourism dynamics, exploring how processes of collaboration, digital mediation, cultural mapping and participatory engagement can contribute to keeping heritage socially meaningful in rapidly changing contemporary contexts.