System design for territorial cycle tourism

Many territories suffer from the lack of strategies and tools for the promotion, fruition and enhancement of their heritage. They require new forms of organisation, ICT interaction platforms, stakeholder participation, infrastruc- tures and services to avoid inadequate fruition and loss of the potential value of their resources. This could gen- erate significant negative effects on the environmental, social and economic aspects of the territory. Nonetheless, the growing interest in ecotourism and the global proliferation of bike sharing systems foreshadow an increasing demand of cycle tourism related services and products. Furthermore, the improved performance features achieved by the technological E-bikes development, could help traveling safely through longer distance and tourist itineraries with steep slopes, especially for users with different abilities and of diverse ages. The paper describes the interme- diate results of the current PhD research, based on the definition of an advanced system model applied to cycling tourism for the enhancement and sustainable fruition of territorial resources.