ToscoTravel
The AlterEco Community Cooperative and Lunigiana Travel for Community tourism in Tuscany
AlterEco is a Community Cooperative operating in the Lunigiana area providing tourism and environmental services, promoting sustainable and identity – based tourism since 1997. In particular, is specializes in territorial marketing, communication, consulting and planning for environment and tourism, services for sustainable tourism and environmental education, outreach and animation services.
From over 20 years is rooted in Equi Terme, where manages the Geo-Archeo-Adventure Park of Equi Caves and Visit Center, a fleet of ebikes (pedal-assisted bycicles) and thanks to sector professionals like environmental hiking and tourism guides proposes visits, adevnture activities, excursion and guided tours.
In this village, it also put on the web all the activities of the place, involving the local inhabitants. It activeted a community services center that offers spaces of coworking, internet services, assistance with telematics paperwork, services of transfert for tourists and inhabitants thanks to an NCC in the area. In addiction, it activeted a civic osservatory, effectively a digital museum of local identity, a dynamic and vital place with a multifunctional approach, where issues related to the various identity activities of the Valley are addressed.
Tos.Co project
The Tos.Co project of Cooperative AlterEco, supported by Tuscany Region, offers at the communities cooperatives of Tuscany the support to commercialize the offert of experiential and identitary tourism, where the communities are involved from the co-design phase to the final hospitality phase.
AlterEco put in disposition the LunigianaTravel project, online tour operator, offering to all and to individual communities coopertives support to the reconnaissance of resources of tourist interest, to the co-design of proposals and of tourism offerings and to their promo-marketing. The ToscoTravel web tourism portal was created in this area.
Community Cooperatives are mostly located in villages situated for the most part in Apennine and rural areas of ‘lesser’ Tuscany but are in fact tourist destinations that are nonetheless capable of offering experiential and active travel that enhances the ‘Tuscan Lifestyle’.
In this sense the cooperatives and their own communities are able to offer to the visitors types of experiential and identitary tourism, original and not replicable. Of course, a tourism product, even in this form, needs to be designed, managed, narrated and marketed with expertise and professionalism to be such.
