Druskininkai Municipality was in full lockdown from 16th of March to 8th of May when the curve of the first Covid-19 wave was starting to flatten.
Even then, in May and June, tourists were cautious and very rarely risked coming to Druskininkai resort. This is a difficult time for Druskininkai as a historical spa city, where tourism is the only most important economy.
These difficult circumstances made it hard to make an offline ULG meeting, , thus, after the first, which occurred in January, the second took place only on July 30th. Druskininkai local ULG meeting had these main agendas:
- Presentation and discussion for local ULG members of the results of a remote URBACT international meeting which happened on June 25-26th 2020
- Presentation of the communication plan of the project “Tourism-Friendly Cities”
- Discussion on sustainable tourism criteria
Indeed we taught it could be very usefull to start a discussion on what means be a real sustainable city in the tourist sector, especially in these difficult times we are living. Each ULG member was given the task of identifying its own 10 criteria for sustainable tourism. In this way, we will find the most overlapping criteria and select the most universal ones from Druskininkai municipality point of view. Druskininkai ULG members are working now on this and on the roadmap for the phase two of the project.
Antanas Urbonas - Municipality of Druskininkai