One Stop Liaison Office of the Region of Central Macedonia, in collaboration with the SPIRA+ Network — comprising the Technology Transfer Offices of the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), International Hellenic University (IHU), University of Macedonia (UoM) and the University of Western Macedonia (UoWM), coordinated by CERTH — organize a thematic workshop:

“Innovation in the Tourism Value Chain: Technology Trends for Central Macedonia and Demonstration of Emerging Solutions”

📅 Theursday, 5 March 2026
🕒 13:30–16:30 (Athens Time)
📍 YMCA, 1 Nik. Germanou Str., Thessaloniki
(Room 303, 2nd Floor)

About the Workshop

The workshop aims to present, review and validate key findings on emerging technologies, trends and future prospects in the Tourism sector. These insights were developed by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Support Mechanism (One Stop Liaison Office) of the Region of Central Macedonia.

The objective is to explore how these technological developments can be practically leveraged by tourism businesses operating in Central Macedonia.

Participants will also have the opportunity to attend live demonstrations of innovative solutions and technologies presented by researchers from the SPIRA+ Network institutions (CERTH, AUTH, UoM, IHU, UoWM), showcasing applications directly aligned with industry needs.

Foresight Exercise

The presentations will conclude with an interactive foresight exercise, where participants will envision and co-design the tourism services, experiences and ecosystem of 2035.

The workshop will be held in Greek.

Should you need more information please contact: smantzanakis@ris3rcm.eu

Travelling into the [future] (spanish: Viajando al [futuro]) is a long-term project aimed at developing desirable future scenarios for sustainable tourism in Spain together with local stakeholders and experts in the field. The project is funded by the European Climate Foundation and implemented in a collaboration between Futures Probes and Tipi. 

Process & Methodology

The project was structured into three main phases: Research, Crowdsourcing, Storytelling.

• In the research phase, a PESTLE analysis and the elaboration of local stakeholder maps identified environmental key factors and networks.
• In the crowdsourcing phase, participatory workshops with local stakeholders and a Delphi survey with tourism experts were run in parallel, built upon and at the same time challenging the knowledge gathered in the previous phase. 
• In the Storytelling phase, the results were used as the fundament for building six future scenarios, visualised as a written narrative accompanied by an illustration. 

Outcome

• Building up and strengthening local stakeholder networks and generating ideas for future sustainable tourism(s). Gathering of key insights on desirable, possible and likely future developments of tourism in Spain. 
• Identification and discussion of needs, desires, worries and attitudes of tourism stakeholders – in its complexity and diversity. 
• Six future scenarios to inspire can activate communities, organisations and citizens to define measures that accelerate the transformation towards a better, more sustainable tourism.
  

Next steps

• Developing indicators to measure the performance of (future) touristic activities in terms of their sustainability.
  
• Creating a network of change agents within the tourism sector to exchange experiences, needs, knowledge and to collectively identify possible synergies and action steps to be taken.
  
• Designing experimental pilot projects focusing on solving some of the concrete challenges identified as common to one or all of the regions observed.

European mountain areas play a central role in the well-being of many highly populated European regions. The big question is how these mountain areas are being impacted by climate change. 

The EU-funded MOVING project will build capacities and co-develop policy frameworks across Europe. It will establish new or upscaled value chains to boost resilience and sustainability of mountain areas. The first step will be to screen traditional and emerging value chains in all European mountain areas. The next step will involve in-depth assessment of vulnerability and resilience of land use, production systems and value chains in 23 mountain regions. The project will use a virtual research environment to promote online interactions amongst actors and new tools to ensure information is accessible by different audiences.