a European competition. It was awarded for being the best sustainable tourism destination of the country for 2011. The competition had been organized by the European Commission and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on the occasion of the program “European Destinations of Excellence” (EDEN), which has a different topic every year. For 2011, the topic was “Tourism and Regeneration of Physical Sites”. The state-members of the EU, which participate in the program through specific processes, were asked to choose one winner and four runner-up destinations, which do not have dominant characteristics of mass tourism and have regenerated a site of the local heritage in order to transform it into a tourism attraction and which can be used as a “catalyst” in the wider local tourism development.
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