The Côa Park Foundation has won a third prize at the European Cultural Tourism Network Awards, this year under the theme “Special Interest Tourism development and promotion based on Cultural Heritage”, in a virtual ceremony held yesterday, 22 October.

The application “Côa Museum with a new digital storytelling for a strong cultural experience”, which presented the project to update the technological supports and contents of its museum programme, financed by the Valorisation Programme for Tourism in Portugal and the Support System for the Digital Transformation of Public Administration (SAMA), won the third prize in the category that received the highest number of applications, presented by cultural institutions from all over Europe: “Innovation & Digitization for Sustainable Cultural Tourism towards Smart Destinations”. First prize went to the project “BlueMed Underwater Museums and Knowledge Awareness Centres”, presented by the Region of Thessaly in Greece, and the second prize went to the project “Tholos VR Theatre”, presented by the Foundation of the Hellenic World, also from Greece. In this category a special mention was also given to the Portuguese project “Rota do Românico”, promoted by the Municipalities Association of Vale do Sousa.

In the other categories of the competition, the first prize attributed to the project “Historic Cofee in the Iberian Peninsula”, presented by the Association of Cofee with History of Portugal (Portugal and Spain), and the second prize attributed to the project “Vilar Formoso – Fronteira da Paz, Memorial to Refugees and to the Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes”, both in the category “Transnational Thematic Tourism Products, including European Cultural Routes”, should be highlighted.

The awards that the European Network of Cultural Tourism in partnership with Europa Nostra, the European Travel Commission, NECSTouR, and the European Commission Directorate-General of Education and Culture aim at recognising annually the quality of the best cultural projects of the European continent, increasing the visibility of cultural tourism destinations, creating a platform for sharing experiences and knowledge, and promoting networking between destinations.

The Côa Park Foundation estimates revenue growth for the year 2021 of about 50%.

The Côa Park Foundation expects to raise around €3,570,000 in revenue during 2021, compared to the €2,415,000 budgeted for 2020.

With unchanged transfers from the funding entities – Direcção Geral do Património Cultural, Turismo de Portugal, Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente and Câmara Municipal de Vila Nova de Foz Côa – in the order of 1 Million Euros (which will represent around 30% of the overall revenue) since 2017, this growth is essentially the result of the various projects that the Côa Park Foundation has been able to approve, within the scope of national and European funding programmes. By way of example, we can highlight the most recent ones:

a: CôaDouro Joint Venture” project financed by NORTE2020 which foresee the creation of a joint cultural agenda with the Douro Museum, during the year 2021.
b: Project “Dinamização da fruição sustentável e acessível do Parque Arqueológico do Vale do Côa” financed by the Valorizar Program, of the Tourism of Portugal.
c: Project “Rock Art Heritage and Landscape to the European Cohesion”, financed by the EEA Grants Fund, which foresees the establishment and deepening of our institutional relationship in the scientific and cultural fields, with the Alta Museum, in Norway.

No less important is the growth in private investment, namely through a policy of cultural patronage and attracting foreign investment, which is expected to exceed 1 Million Euros in 2021.