Before the Covid-19 pandemic air travel was growing steeply and “flight shame” became one of the catch phrases of the climate crisis. Too often urban citizens undermined eco-friendly workday mobility with long-distance holiday air travel. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic posed new challenges. The recreational needs had to be satisfied by domestic tourism closer to home. There is a need for innovative sustainable tourism products and concepts to respond to both of these trends. Bicycle tourism combined with public transport for destination access and egress is a promising candidate for low carbon and regional tourism concepts. The Danube region is among the most important European cycle tourism destinations. A long stretch of the EuroVelo route 6 follows the river Danube, other EuroVelo routes cross the region. The European Interreg-project EcoVeloTour combines three main elements to support new sustainable tourism concepts in this corridor: ecotourism, use of public transport to access the destination or starting and final points of cycle tours and cycling within the destination region. Key elements of the EcoVeloTour approach are sustainable mobility and ecotourism guidelines. The guidelines utilize synergies between sustainable multimodal mobility planning, including cycling infrastructure, and cyclist ecotourism related services and ecotourism development (e.g. destination management, marketing, product development) along the EuroVelo routes. The guidelines for sustainable bicycle tourism provide a comprehensive basis for planning and improving all relevant mobility-related infrastructure and services. The chapter “Infrastructure for high-level bicycle tourism” deals with relevant road infrastructure elements like different types of tracks, intersections and roundabouts, route signposting, bicycle parking, shelters for cyclists, lighting and maintenance. The chapter “Transport services and intermodality” addresses public transport use for transfers to origin and from final destination of bicycle tours. It describes infrastructure, information and services needed at intermodal nodes. Regional bicycle tourism strategies and pilot projects are elaborated based on the EcoVeloTour guidelines. An interactive self-assessment tool to support strategy development and pilot actions of the regions was developed and tested in transnational learning interactions.

bicycle tourism, ecotourism, intermodality, public transport, infrastructure