What is the project about?

Future Lies in Tourism Support Fund aims to strengthen capacity of local tourism actors and NGOs to contribute to the sustainable tourism development through partnerships with public and private institutions. The project will conduct its activities through a grant scheme and training programmes, with a view to develop best practice examples and contribute to knowledge sharing in the area of sustainable tourism implementation.

This fund is established to provide local tourism actors and NGOs with necessary guidance, tools and resources to strengthen their capacities in order to contribute to the sustainable tourism development through partnerships with public and private institutions in the following ways:

- Encouraging the development of awareness-raising, capacity development and research projects for sustainable tourism

- Supporting innovative, creative, participatory, sustainable, society- sensitive and gender-balanced projects of local tourism actors and NGOs that provide best practices for sustainable tourism implemented in partnership with public and private institutions.

- Strengthening the project development and implementation skills of local tourism actors and NGOs via implementation support, structured trainings, networking platforms (via regular meetings, conference and web portal

What has been the situation?

2023 Tourism Strategy of Turkey prioritizes diversification in tourism activities, in line with the global tourism and development trends. The 2023 Tourism Strategy aims at generating employment and income increases for all segments of the society through increases in tourism revenues with a balanced use of strategic natural, cultural, historical and geographical assets and conservation. In this regard, tourism organization and governance, service quality, marketing and promotion, diversification has importance as well as support of new initiatives such as brand cities and tourism corridors. This current strategy at the same time aims at institutionalizing governance structures that allow various segments of the society including CSOs, private sector and local actors into the planning and implementation processes.

UNDP and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism have a longstanding partnership since 2007, focusing on various segments of tourism for local economic development, like rural tourism, cultural tourism and winter tourism in three different project partnerships. Future Lies in Tourism Support Fund is established on the achievements and lessons learned in order to create mechanisms to support local tourism initiatives.

How are we doing this?

Future Lies in Tourism Support Fund is making its activities under three pillars;

1. Support Fund

2. Awareness Raising Activities

3. Networking, Sharing and Improvement

through;

- Micro grant programme and project implementation support to grantees.

- Web portal, including reference documents, regular online communication, e-bulletins, videos, webinars.

- Networking platforms, including workshops, seminars, conference

How will Turkey benefit?

The primary direct beneficiaries of this project will be the local tourism actors, initiatives and NGOs from Turkey. The ultimate beneficiaries will be local communities living where the supported projects are implemented. During the project lifetime the content support to the sustainable tourism portal and annual conferences which will be established and held, the beneficiaries will extent from local communities to whole sustainable tourism community in Turkey (tourism academia, civil society organizations, local authorities etc). The fund will be designed to support the projects having a gender-balanced approach and taking into consideration the social impacts of their activities.