Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Programme 2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-A Poland-Denmark-Germany-Lithuania-Sweden (South Baltic)

Date of latest update: 2026-09-08

Description

Description (EN):

Tourism is one of South Baltic’s strongest economic and cultural assets. Cities like Gdańsk, Rostock, Karlskrona, Bornholm, and Klaipėda attract over 35 million visitors annually (Eurostat, 2022), generating jobs and visibility but also increasing environmental pressure. Tourists behave differently from residents: they stay briefly, often lack local knowledge, and seek convenience. They generate up to twice as much waste and water use per day (UNWTO, 2023) and rely more on single-use products. Such patterns threaten both the preservation of natural and cultural assets and the quality of the visitor experience. To stay competitive, South Baltic destinations must make sustainable practices visible, easy, and rewarding for visitors. The CIRCUS project addresses these challenges and strengthens the attractiveness, sustainability, and resilience of South Baltic destinations by promoting conscious tourism — an approach that enhances visitor experience while embedding circular and resource-efficient practices into tourism services and infrastructure. It focuses on the experience as much as the footprint, introducing circular visitor management systems that help tourists act sustainably without sacrificing comfort, while enabling municipalities and attractions to reduce waste, save resources, and enhance their image as responsible, high-quality destinations. CIRCUS builds on the Interreg project STRIVE (2024–2027), which demonstrates how circular solutions can improve festival sustainability. STRIVE revealed common sustainability challenges across South Baltics and showed that visible, visitor-oriented circular measures could effectively influence behaviour around waste, packaging, and food surplus. While STRIVE focuses on temporary events, CIRCUS transfers these learnings to permanent tourism settings. This evolution marks a new phase: applying proven concepts to year-round destinations. CIRCUS therefore represents capitalisation, not duplication, in line with the Programme’s goal of upscaling successful results. Tourism destinations across the South Baltic face shared challenges that affect both sustainability and visitor satisfaction, in areas such as waste, single-use packaging, water and sanitation. Each of these themes will be addressed as a tourism service innovation, not just a technical measure — improving the experience, and perception of destinations as clean, responsible and high-quality. CIRCUS pilots represent the main tourism typologies of the South Baltic — urban, cultural, and island destinations — ensuring replicability and scalability across the region. They also address both open systems and confined sites, demonstrating flexibility of solutions under different governance and infrastructure models: Gdańsk (PL): A heritage and maritime tourism city with 4.5 million visitors annually. Pilots will target high-traffic urban areas. Rostock (DE): Major coastal destination with over 2 million overnight stays. Focus on eco-efficient sanitation and waste solutions integrating regional SMEs. Bornholm (DK): Island destination with around 600,000 visitors yearly. Pilots will create small “circular visitor hubs” combining services, reuse systems, and education. Lithuanian Sea Museum (LT): National attraction with 600,000 annual visitors. Will pilot interactive systems linking sustainability with visitor education. Karlskrona (SE): UNESCO World Heritage city attracting hundreds of thousands yearly. Pilots in high-traffic urban and cultural areas. CIRCUS enables destinations to draw on each other’s expertise through cross-border collaboration. Solutions tested in one site will be adapted and transferred to others, ensuring joint learning and shared benefits. To secure long-term cooperation and visibility, the project will establish a Cross-Regional Conscious Tourism Hub: a digital platform for sharing knowledge and solutions that connects stakeholders, and forms a lasting cooperation structure beyond the project’s lifetime.

Thematic information

Tourism Infrastructure Knowledge and technology transfer

Priority: (VI-A_SB_3) Attractive South Baltic - activate the tourist and cultural potential of South Baltic Area

Priority specific objective: RSO4.6. Enhancing the role of culture and sustainable tourism in economic development, social inclusion and social innovation

Priority policy objective (Interreg specific objective): PO4 A more social and inclusive Europe implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights

Type of intervention: 165 Protection, development and promotion of public tourism assets and tourism services

Partners (7)

Lead Partner: Clean - The Danish Water & Environmental Cluster

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 29727538

Address: Frederiksborgvej, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Legal status: private

Organisation type: Enterprise, except SME

Total budget: EUR 281 600.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 225 280.00

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 56 320.00

Lithuanian Sea Museum

Name: Lithuanian Sea Museum

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 190464695

Address: Smiltynes Str., LT93100 Klaipeda, Lithuania

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Enterprise, except SME

Total budget: EUR 234 940.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 187 952.00

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 46 988.00

Smart Innovation Denmark

Name: Smart Innovation Denmark

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 1028522505

Address: Jernbanegade, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Legal status: private

Organisation type: Higher education and research organisations

Total budget: EUR 273 793.50

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 219 034.80

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 54 758.70

City of Gdansk

Name: City of Gdansk

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 5830011969

Address: Nowe Ogrody, 80-803 Gdańsk, Poland

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Regional public authority

Total budget: EUR 258 000.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 206 400.00

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 51 600.00

Rostock & Warnemünde Tourism Board

Name: Rostock & Warnemünde Tourism Board

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 868103732

Address: Am Strom, 18119 Rostock, Germany

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Regional public authority

Total budget: EUR 249 295.97

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 199 436.77

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 49 859.20

BOFA

Name: BOFA

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 26696348

Address: Almegårdsvej, 3700 Rønne, Denmark

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Regional public authority

Total budget: EUR 305 800.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 244 640.00

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 61 160.00

The Swedish Association of City Center Management

Name: The Swedish Association of City Center Management

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 5565292033

Address: Lokgatan11, 211 20 Malmo, Sweden

Legal status: private

Organisation type: Interest groups including NGOs

Total budget: EUR 252 170.00

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 201 736.00

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 80.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 50 434.00

Partners map

Partners and Projects info

Lietuvos jūrų muziejus

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

Smart Innovation Denmark

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

City of Gdansk

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

Rostock & Warnemünde Tourism Board

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

BOFA

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

The Swedish Association of City Center Management

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Partners and Projects info

Clean - The Danish Water & Environmental Cluster

Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Project acronym: Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Project ID: STHB.03.01-IP.01-0015/25

Project start date: 2026-06-26

Project end date: 2029-02-26

Project status: ongoing

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 1 855 599.47

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 1 484 479.57

Total EU funding (co-financing rate): 80.00%

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 1 484 479.57. Co-financing rate, 80.00%.

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

(bullets are inserted automatically and may be incorrectly placed)

Programme Common Output Indicator:

RCO 116 - Jointly developed solutions, Measurement unit:
RCO 084 - Pilot actions developed jointly and implemented in projects, Measurement unit:
RCO 077 - Number of cultural and tourism sites supported, Measurement unit:
RCO 001 - Enterprises supported (of which: micro, small, medium, large), Measurement unit:

Delivered output indicator(s):

(RCO077_Interreg) MAIN: Number of cultural and tourism sites supported: 5.0
(RCO084) Pilot actions developed jointly and implemented in projects : 5.0
(RCO116) Jointly developed solutions: 3.0

Programme Common Result Indicator:

RCR 104 - Solutions taken up or up-scaled by organisations, Measurement unit:
RCR 077 - Visitors of cultural and tourism sites supported, Measurement unit:

Delivered result indicator(s):

(RCR077STHB) Visitors of cultural and tourism sites supported: 2515000.0
(RCR104) Solutions taken up or up-scaled by organisations: 3.0

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-A Poland-Denmark-Germany-Lithuania-Sweden (South Baltic)

Latest month of project-partner-call data publication

2026-09

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

60 / 60 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

429 / 429 (100%)

Notes on the data

There are discrepancies in this programme's financial data in keep.eu. Namely, in one or more cases, the sum of the project partners' budgets exceeds the total budget of the respective project. Interact is working with the Programme to correct those figures.

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Conscious Tourism in Resilient Cities and Urban Spaces (CIRCUS)

Description

Thematic information

Partners (7)

Partners map

Summary

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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