Co-designing Inclusive Tourism with Youth: the SITE Hackathon as a Participatory Good Practice

Within the framework of the SITE project (Shaping Inclusive Tourism for Everyone), funded by the Interreg Italy–Croatia Programme 2021–2027, a hackathon initiative was promoted and organised. The SITE project aims to support tourism destinations in improving the accessibility and inclusiveness of public spaces and tourism experiences by promoting Universal Design (UD) principles and participatory planning approaches. UD is a design approach based on the principle that environments, products and services should be usable by all people, regardless of their abilities or characteristics (Story M. F. et al., 1998). Several authors emphasize that UD can foster broader social change by promoting values such as equity, democracy and citizenship (Iwarsson & Ståhl, 2003; Erdtman et al., 2021). Within this framework, co-design activities with stakeholders and users played a central role in identifying accessibility challenges and opportunities in tourism destinations. Building on these results, the organisation of an international hackathon represented an innovative and participatory approach to further develop and test creative solutions addressing accessibility issues. The hackathon, titled “Inclusive Tourism for Everyone”, took place in Trieste on 26th–27th November 2025 and was aimed at young participants from different disciplines and countries of the Programme Area and beyond. The initiative built upon the results of previous project activities, particularly the co-design workshops carried out with stakeholders and users, including persons with disabilities. The hackathon therefore represented an important step in translating identified accessibility needs into innovative and practical solutions.