Implementation Challenges in Tourism-Related Green Deals: Three cases from the Intelligent Cities Challenge

Purpose-The European Green Deal represents the European Union's strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, emphasizing decoupling economic growth from resource use and a 55% emissions reduction by 2030. The European Commission’s Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC)is one of the initiatives implemented to supportthe green transitionat a local level, specifically via Local Green Deals (LGDs), fostering public-private collaboration across various sectors,including tourism. Currently, no studycomparestheimplementation challenges experienced by Italian cities from the ICC's first edition (2020-2022). This study addresses this gap through exploratory research onthe finalreports of the cities ofPescara, Rome, and Venice, which implemented tourism-related LGDs. The purpose is to identifythemain issues encountered in involving public and private stakeholders, providing usefulinsights for the Italian cities participating in the second edition of theICC and advancing understanding of sustainable tourism governance.Design/methodology/approach-Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) was used to examine the final reports fromthethree Italian cities (Pescara, Rome, Venice) that participated in the first edition of the ICC with a tourism related LGD.Themethodology specifically adopted anopen coding framework that was structured around three primary phases: (i) conceptualising, (ii) defining categories, and (iii) developing categories. Originality/value-This research uses a comparative QCA of Italian ICC tourism LGD reports, uncovering core issues like stakeholder disengagement, institutional silos, and resource shortages, previously unexamined in detail. Findings align with and confirmliterature on participatory governance and green urban transitions. Future studies could scale to all European ICC cities post-second edition or evaluate intervention efficacy through longitudinal tracking. Practical implications -Thefindingsof the study can be used by public administrationsplanning to involve public and privatestakeholders in participative tourism governance processes. Specifically, the findings suggest that, to tackle the main issues encountered by the analysed cities in implementing their Local Green Deals, public administrations should focuson efficient stakeholders’ engagement methods, pool resources and coordinate with other public entities to avoid fragmentation and resource limitations.