The island of Gran Canaria recently played host to the launch of the TWINNEDbySTARS project, an initiative that seeks to transform European Outermost Regions into internationally recognised maritime ecotourism destinations. This endeavour is designed to harness the benefits of tourism for marine biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.

The kick-off meeting for this European project took place on Wednesday, October 25th, at the Science and Technology Park of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Subsequently, a public official presentation, open to the local stakeholders and policy makers, was organised on Thursday, October 26th, at the facilities of the Canarian Latin Sailing Federation in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The TWINNEDbySTARS project is spearheaded from the Canary Islands by the TIDES Institute of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The consortium is composed by 9 strategic partners specifically from four EU Outermost Regions (Azores, Canary Islands, Martinique, and Madeira), plus a multi-country organisation representing recreational boating and nautical tourism industry in Europe.

The project builds on the success of previous interregional cooperation projects and networks promoted in the Macaronesian region. Building on this experience and promoting the involvement of local communities, TWINNEDbySTARS will develop and pilot transformational marine and coastal ecotourism products. Onboard marine environmental education, navigation, respectful sighting, and start light attributes are examples of good practices that will be considered for the ideation of the project’s innovative ecotourism products.

In a second stage of the project, a capacity building programme will be also carefully designed to increase awareness and provide tourism firms and other relevant stakeholders with tools to accelerate digital and ecological transition and to identify opportunities for open and social innovation with actors from other European Outermost Regions.

Furthermore, the consortium will analyse the available coastal and maritime tourism products and development sites in the four project regions. This data will be processed to design and implement the co-creation workshops on tourism products to be tested with real costumers.

Overall, the project will increase the competitiveness of the maritime tourism sector in Outermost Regions while contributing to protect marine biodiversity, preserving the cultural heritage and develop marine astro-tourism, recalling ancient navigators as a sustainable destination for these remote territories, by strengthening partnerships already in operation, capacity building and co-creation for tourism products.

To implement its activities, TWINNEDbySTARS has received European support, with 85% cofinancing of nearly 1 million euros by the European Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure, and Environment, through the European Maritime, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Fund.