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Shaping Europe’s digital future

The Europeana platform

The Europeana platform is Europe’s digital cultural collection for responsible, accessible, sustainable and innovative tourism.

    The interplay of light and shade, the impressive cloudy sky over the city of Delft.The subtle reflections in the water make this painting by Johannes Vermeer an absolute masterpiece.There is hardly a breath of wind. The city has an air of tranquility.

Many European countries heavily rely on tourism for income. The tourism sector is facing severe economic hardship in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. The European Commission is stepping up its support for the tourism sector to get back on track by promoting local, sustainable tourism through Europeana. The general public now have even more opportunities to discover Europe’s rich diversity of culture and nature in their own country or in another EU country all year round.

Digital technologies, such as immersive, virtual and augmented reality and 3D, are an increasingly important factor for success when it comes to attracting tourists to a destination. They offer new ways for creative expression and have the power to inspire new as well as regular audiences.

Europeana is Europe’s digital cultural platform. It is allows for responsible, sustainable and innovative tourism. It can inspire people to discover beautiful cities and landscapes, historic places and hidden gems across Europe. It has a vast digital collection of artefacts, music, sound files, images of cultural heritage buildings and sites, and a budding collection of 3D images.

Our cultural heritage serves as the glue between the past, present and the future, helping people to learn about their history. To support tourism, Europeana has created a special section on the portal: Discovering Europe. This section allows the user to take a virtual journey across Europe from the comfort of their home.

Europeana’s portal for professionals, Europeana Pro, is creating and hosting a 'Tourism Hub'. This hub will help heritage professionals to find initiatives and opportunities that support and drive tourism throughout the EU.

Europeana Pro will invite professionals within the Europeana Network and Aggregator Forum to share their own examples and initiatives on the Hub. They will be encouraged to support the work further by sharing these within their own organisations and networks in order to widen the reach of the tourism initiative by Europeana.

The Commission expert group on Digital Cultural Heritage and Europeana (DCHE) will serve as a platform to publicise the initiative and to share best practises at national level.

Facts on Europeana

  • Europeana was launched by the European Commission on 20 November 2008;
  • it currently provides access to over 58 million digitised cultural heritage records from over 3600 cultural heritage institutions and organisations;
  • the availability of public domain masterpieces serves as appetisers for the would-be tourist.
  • it is completely free to use for all;
  • teachers and students use it to get inspiration for their projects;
  • the European Commission funds the Europeana initiative under Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) has been developing the web-app Culturalgems. The app offers a map-based interface. It focuses on cities in Europe, retrieving key points of interest from OpenStreetMap. JRC have invited local residents and city representatives to contribute their favourite cultural and creative places, together with practical information and reviews.

The Commission has a clear medium and long-term vision to build a resilient and competitive tourism ecosystem in the EU, with the aim of being the world leader in responsible, sustainable and innovative tourism. There is a strong interdependency between culture, and in particular cultural heritage, and tourism. Many tourists chose their destination for its cultural heritage sites.

In the tourism and transport package, the European Commission presented actions to help diversify local tourism offer and connect the public to the diversity and richness of nature and culture in Europe. The Communication 'tourism and transport in 2020 and beyond' (.pdf) is also supporting the European platform for Digital Cultural Heritage and Europeana to develop its tourism angle highlighting European cultural jewels and hidden gems.

Figures on tourism in Europe:

  • 40% of all EU tourists chose the destination because of its culture and cultural heritage sites;
  • 62 % of Europeans make at least 1 leisure trip every year and most of them stay in Europe;
  • €190 billion is spent on tourism during a normal summer season;
  • 10% of EU GDP comes from tourism.

Latest News

PRESS RELEASE |
Commission opens calls to invest over €176 million in digital capacities and tech

The European Commission opened a new set of calls for proposals under the 2023-2024 Work Programmes of the Digital Europe Programme to strengthen digital capacities across EU. These calls are open to businesses, public administrations, and other entities from the EU Member States, EFTA/EEA countries, and associated countries. The budget for this set of calls is over €176 million.

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