Category: Cultural and Heritage Tourism
Date: October 2019
Location: Kotor, Montenegro
InSET – Institute for Sustainable Development, Environment and Tourism contributed as a collaborator and co-organizer of the IX International AssMed Conference, entitled “Slow and Fast Tourism: Travellers, Local Communities, Territories, Experiences”, held on 4–5 October 2019 in Kotor, Montenegro.
The conference aimed to bring together leading researchers from the Mediterranean region and beyond to explore contemporary challenges and opportunities in tourism development. The event fostered interdisciplinary dialogue across tourism studies, entrepreneurship, finance, geography, and the sociology of tourism, strengthening collaboration between international scholars and researchers from Albania at both national and international levels.
Conference Overview
The conference was led by the Mediterranean Association for the Sociology of Tourism (AssMed) and the University of Montenegro (Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, Kotor; Faculty of Philosophy, Nikšić), in collaboration with:
University of Calabria (Department of Business and Legal Sciences – Tourism Research Centre)
University of Bologna (Ce.P.CI.T. – Centre for the Study of Urban and Territorial Issues)
The event gathered over 50 researchers from across the Balkan region, providing a platform for scientific exchange, networking, and the presentation of ongoing research related to sustainable tourism models.
A central theme of the conference was slow tourism, a relatively recent but increasingly influential approach to sustainable tourism development. Slow tourism promotes alternative travel experiences that value quality, authenticity, and local engagement, including cultural routes, walking and cycling trails, historical railways, nautical tourism, and other low-impact mobility options.
The relevance of slow tourism is underscored by policy developments such as Italy’s designation of 2019 as the National Year of Slow Tourism, while also highlighting the challenges faced by Mediterranean destinations in balancing tourism growth with environmental and cultural preservation. Investing in slow tourism supports the protection and regeneration of places, local knowledge, cultural memory, and regional identities, contributing to more resilient and inclusive tourism systems.
The conference emphasized the role of research in shaping market strategies, entrepreneurship, education, and training, ultimately influencing the successful implementation of slow tourism initiatives across Mediterranean countries. The exchange of evidence-based insights strengthened the potential for research-driven policy and practice in sustainable tourism.
InSET’s Contribution
InSET actively contributed to the success of the conference through:
Co-organizing the international event
Moderating thematic panels
Supporting the scientific paper review process
Through its involvement, InSET reaffirmed its commitment to advancing sustainable, culturally sensitive, and research-informed tourism development at regional and international levels.