The strong will of the operators of Cerreto Laghi for the evolution of their town center from "skiing station" to "tourist locality", that is a "town" characterized by the presence of the Park and environmental quality. This is what emerges from the first steps of the participation process started with the project Eco-cluster, aiming at creating a coalition for the environmental qualification of the mountain ridge locality. A process which is therefore successfully developing and which opens very interesting opportunities.
On 29th March a meeting was held - the first operational meeting aiming at thoroughly studying the practical aims suggested by the National Park and its partners. This meeting saw a great participation. As a matter of fact, over one third of the local enterprises was represented there and the discussion - which saw the participation of the President and the Director of the Park, as well as of the people in charge of the project - has highlighted a general appreciation and a great curiosity for the opportunities offered by the idea of the "cluster", that is of the joint group, on which the initiative financed by the European Union is based. Starting from the opportunity to immediately use for the promotion and the reservations the Hospitality Pages that, through the Park, have been presented on the internet by Parks.it, the Italian Park Portal, the first Italian website dedicated to tourism and nature, one of the most important portals in the world with about one million visits per month (about half a million in a year coming from the pages of the accommodation structures).
Many the ideas emerged from the operators themselves: from the idea to enhance the future environmental qualification in particular for the promotion of tourism in schools, whose didactic programs include the issues of ecology and modern environmental management, to the idea of a close and continuous relationship with local schools aiming at training young people that could be a benefit in the activities of Cerreto Laghi, to the involvement, in order to develop the project, of the local administrations - like La Spezia and Massa Carrara - representing the main places of origins of the visitors of Cerreto.
The next stages will aim at implementing all the actions to offer all the activities - accommodation, commercial, sports, and service structures - the necessary guarantees of environmental sustainability and the relative certifications as a basis to overcome the limits of the current lack of homogeneity in the organizational and "aesthetic" aspects of the center and to better exploit the great merits it has, consisting of the wonderful surroundings and of the extraordinary and strategic geographical position.
