Tourism trails as tools for cross-border integration: A best practice case study of the Vennbahn cycling route

Arie Stoffelen

Annals of Tourism Research, 2018, vol. 73, issue C, 91-102

Abstract: This paper evaluates which processes determine the leverage of cycling tourism trails for mainstreaming cross-border contact and ‘soft’ region-building. Reflecting on the Vennbahn between Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg, the paper shows that the influence of routes on cross-border integration depends on the trail’s strength as a tourism product, its cross-border institutionalization, and the geography and scale of the trail and the involved destinations. Tourism trails could contribute to cross-border integration, vindicating the substantial money spent on such projects in INTERREG programmes. However, border-related barriers remain robust even for tourism projects that are best practices of cross-border cooperation. As such, there is an unfulfilled potential of tourism trails in their contribution to cross-border communication and social cohesion in many European borderlands.

Keywords: Cycling routes; Cycling trails; Cross-border cooperation; Regional development; Borderlands; Institutional asymmetry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:73:y:2018:i:c:p:91-102

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2018.09.008

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