The pandemic pressed a long pause on travels, visits (museum, concert, food testing, and more), film projection (cinema or outdoor) and to many other hobbies we have!
Fortunately, in many European countries, initiatives have been developed during and after the lockdowns. It allows the citizens to keep digitally thriving of those activities:
- It is possible to visit Le Louvre (Paris, France) from home! La Joconde in VR, an online tour of the most famous rooms of the museum and some MOOC to learn more about the art movements are available to maintain the visits! Discover virtual visits and online learning here!
- The Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan, Italy) is offering a virtual tour to explore its masterpieces! You can virtually visit it here!
- On the 18th of April, the singer Lady Gaga organised in collaboration with the OMS a worldwide charity concert to bring support to citizens to fight against the coronavirus. The One World: Together at Home concert was successful: hours of show in collaboration with dozens of artists, that “raised $127 million in donations” (Forbes)!
Those virtual activities helped European to keep up during the lockdown. Nevertheless, the borders closed and travelling forbidden for the safety of people, discovering countries remained impossible.
Since the 15th of June 2020 (earlier for some countries) the European borders are open. On this occasion, the European Commission launched the site Re-Open EU: it provides, in all EU languages, every information needed to re-explore Europe safely again! The site is available here!
Several European countries are encouraging their citizens to travel in their own country to re-discover it and to support the economy. In this sense, the European project Your Local Guide gave some tips, for people who are interested in tourism destination management, here. This project aims at increasing the digital skills of European seniors in the tourism sector at a local level, to manage and promote activities online! The consortium developed four useful and free handbooks, with innovative learning material to learn how to operate and highlight tourism destinations digitally!
After all, tourism is from far one of the industries the most economically touched by the pandemic. We must seriously take into consideration all the rules and restrictions of each European countries to recover and re-travel. A supportive and united Europe that boost initiatives that aim to support their countries will help to overcome this difficult situation, in which we are still leaving.
Sources:
- https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne
- https://pinacotecabrera.org/virtualtour/start.html
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2020/04/19/the-story-behind-the-worlds-biggest-charity-concert-what-was-it-all-for/#17088f377e35
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/arts/music/lady-gaga-concert-one-world.html
- https://reopen.europa.eu/en/
- http://yourlocalguide.org/en/
- https://www.facebook.com/DSConsultingReus/photos/pcb.1685334698283844/1685328491617798/?type=3&theater