FOOTPRINTS project : how Ravenna is rethinking tourism for good. Welcome, temporary citizens!

Meandering through Ravenna, one can often feel as though time has stood still. Cobbled streets lined with gelaterias, artisanal shops offering handmade pasta, and the irresistible scent of tagliatella fritta wafting from bakery shelves all coexist with stationery stores proudly resisting the dominance of shopping malls, selling pens, notebooks, and coloured paper as if preserving a forgotten charm. Everything seems to be part of a living framework that has managed to evolve while preserving the authenticity and humanity of its roots.

And if you look closer, you’ll notice floral tile mosaics adorning façades and doorways, echoing the grand Byzantine artworks housed in Ravenna’s world-renowned monuments. Indeed, Ravenna, in the heart of Italy’s Romagna region, boasts an artistic and cultural heritage of unparalleled richness: eight UNESCO World Heritage sites, monumental mosaics, a thousand-year-old legacy and a strong identity shaped by art, tradition, spirituality, and literature.

But Ravenna is more. It is also a land deeply immersed in nature, where biodiversity continues to flourish despite tourism and industrial development. Within the protected Po Delta Park, visitors can encounter rare species of flora and fauna in a unique environment that’s not just observed, but experienced. This balance between ecological preservation and human activity is one of Ravenna’s most remarkable features.

And let’s not forget its 35 kilometres of coastline, home to nine seaside resorts—from the wild charm of Marina Romea, embraced by pinewood forest, to the lively Lido Adriano, where tourists and locals animate a vibrant nightlife. Inclusivity is another hallmark of Ravenna’s seaside identity. All beach establishments provide accessible walkways, with Punta Marina Terme standing out as a model of excellence in Europe: a fully equipped, assisted beach facility designed to welcome people with severe disabilities and their families.

The Ravenna area seems to rest at a delicate point of balance, where the essence of its traditions, culture, and territorial specificities has not been swept away by unchecked development or unsustainable use of resources. In Ravenna, tourism development has not erased identity for the moment. Here, tourism is not yet perceived as an intrusive necessity, but as a shared opportunity, a source of pride and connection. The FOOTPRINTS project, designed by the Ravenna Municipality along with 8 partners, was born in such a context, with the objective of building a model where tourism development means preserving authenticity, anticipating negative impacts and welcoming visitors as “temporary citizen”.

With FOOTPRINTS, Ravenna envisions more than just sustainable tourism, it aims for sustainability as the default setting, embedded into every aspect of the visitor experience.

What does this mean?

As sustainability experts have long known, there's a significant gap between intention and action. While many people express a desire to act responsibly, their actual behaviour often falls short, especially on vacation, when people feel more relaxed and less obligated. That’s why behavioural tactics, gamification, and reward systems are particularly interesting strategies.  The FOOTPRINTS project has integrated them throughout its development. The goal? Make sustainable choices the easiest and most enjoyable ones.

Key actions include :

• Developing a digital gamification platform, offering visitors fun challenges rewarded with local products and experiences
• Redesigning urban spaces and itineraries to improve accessibility and encourage social connection in city centres
• Enhancing green mobility through new services, such as three new bicycle rental and repair hubs in strategic areas
• Training local tourism operators to reduce their environmental impact and use behavioural tactics to promote sustainable actions among visitors

“In FOOTPRINTS we see the visitor as a temporary citizen.” explains Maria Grazia Marini, Ravenna’s Director of Tourism. “We want them to feel at home, to feel they belong to the city. Being a citizen means enjoying a place but also taking responsibility for it. That’s how we imagine our future tourists: connected to Ravenna’s authenticity and actively involved in our sustainability journey.”

And what about permanent citizens, the residents? “We consider Ravenna’s citizens the long-term beneficiaries of the project” Marini continues, “FOOTPRINTS is designed to enhance quality of life by preventing tourism from disrupting daily life. That’s why we’re fostering new experiences and services that can be enjoyed by both visitors and locals.”

Data collection and ongoing monitoring will allow the city to refine its actions and share its approach with its transfer partners cities: Veszprém (Hungary), Dubrovnik (Croatia), and Altea (Spain).

The ambitions of FOOTPRINTS are as timely as innovative. With its diverse territory, strong cultural foundation, and forward-thinking vision, Ravenna is perfectly positioned to become a living lab for regenerative tourism - an approach that goes beyond minimizing harm to restoring and enriching communities and ecosystems.

As Shirley Nieuwland, expert in regenerative tourism, explains: “Regenerative tourism focuses on making a positive contribution to place, where the needs of people and place (both in social and ecological terms) are put first. With that, it puts great emphasis on the participation of local people in the tourism development process and often works with relatively small-scale local initiatives."

Ravenna is already fertile ground for this kind of tourism. From experiential activities celebrating local traditions, like mosaic workshops or cooking classes, to nature-focused experiences such as cycling routes or birdwatching in the Po Delta, the potential is enormous. Moreover, Ravenna can truly offer year-round tourism, helping to spread flows across seasons and fostering deeper connections between visitors and locals.

But risks remain. These include the risk of excessive “touristification” and loss of identity, the risk of overwhelming certain areas with unmanaged visitor flows, especially linked to cruise ship arrivals, the risk of short-term rentals development, which can lead to increased housing prices. Footprints represent a unique opportunity to drive territorial transformation while carefully considering and managing the associated risks by :

• Keeping residents at the centre, involving them in decision-making and implementation
• Identifying and prioritizing shared needs, such as accessibility, quality of life, and traffic flow, when designing new services
• Using behavioural tactics and gamification to make sustainable choices intuitive, fun and appealing

Over the next three years, Ravenna could become a living laboratory for a new model of tourism development, a place where visiting and living are experiences of joy, connection, and co-creation. Shall we bet that by 2028, Ravenna’s residents will still proudly say: “Tourists? No, they don’t bore us—quite the opposite!”

Stay tuned!

To know more about the project :

https://www.urban-initiative.eu/ia-cities/ravenna/about-projects

https://www.turismo.ra.it/en/ravenna--smart-tourism/european-projects/footprints-project/