World Tourism Day 2025: Preserving and enhancing cultural heritage through digital innovation

This year’s edition of World Tourism Day, celebrated on 27 September, highlights sustainability as the foundation of tourism development and transformation. Digitalisation plays a critical role in preserving cultural sites and assets, promoting sustainable practices, and enhancing travellers’ experiences, which in turn creates new opportunities for the industry.

Within the context of the Common European Data Spaces, the European Tourism Data Space specifically aims to support the tourism sector by connecting stakeholders across the EU, enabling them to exchange different types of information in the form of data. This shared access drives sustainability, innovation and competitiveness across the sector by deploying cutting-edge technologies and applications, and by reusing data to analyse sectoral patterns and trends, thereby increasing efficiency and improving the customer experience.

HaDEA is managing actions funded by the Digital Europe Programme that support the digitalisation and growth of the tourism sector. Let’s take a look at a few standout examples: 

• DEPLOYTOUR is a €15.3 million project, co-funded by the European Union under the Digital Europe Programme. Spanning 36 months, the project addresses one of the sector’s long-standing challenges: fragmented and inaccessible data. DEPLOYTOUR will develop a common, trusted, and secure European Tourism Data Space where data from diverse stakeholders can be shared and harnessed effectively. By unlocking the power of data, the initiative aims to deliver more personalised, sustainable, and efficient tourism experiences. Strengthening collaboration across the sector, DEPLOYTOUR will tackle recurring challenges such as sustainability, visitor flow management, and SME empowerment. Throughout its three-year implementation, DEPLOYTOUR will actively engage stakeholders through forums, workshops, and events, fostering dialogue and co-creation to ensure the initiative’s long-term impact.
• The 5DCulture project demonstrates how digitised 3D assets can be reused to enhance both the tourism sector and visitor experiences at attractions and sites. During its implementation, the consortium reused existing 3D models to deploy new applications and deliver workshops, making cultural experiences more immersive and insightful. Two pilots were rolled out: interactive postcards at the UNESCO Heritage site of Brú na Bóinne and at the industrial heritage sites in Idrija, Slovenia, where visitors could explore detailed 3D models of landmarks. These postcards integrated holograms that enriched storytelling around the sites. In total, 170 tourists took part in the pilots during summer 2024.

The consortium also used existing 3D models to create printed figures for a tour operator supporting visually impaired visitors, and ran a workshop for children aged 6–10 at the Iberian Museum featuring unique 3D models of Iberian culture. Both activities encouraged tactile, visual and virtual interactions. The project’s results continue to have an impact through the XRCulture initiative, which will test extended reality in the tourism sector among other strands.

Background 

Common European Data Spaces will make more data available for access and reuse. This will be done in a trustworthy and secure environment for the benefit of European businesses and citizens.

European Strategy for Data focuses on putting people first in developing technology, and defending and promoting European values and rights in the digital world.

The Digital Europe Programme aims to build the strategic digital capacities of the EU and to facilitate the wide deployment of digital technologies. With an overall budget of €7.5 billion, out of which €0.8 billion is managed by HaDEA, the programme will support investments in the following sectors:

• High Performance Computing
• Cloud, data and Artificial Intelligence
• Cybersecurity
• Advanced digital skills
• Accelerating best use of technologies