TRAILVALUE turns long-distance trails from routes people pass through into engines of lasting local value. Across three deliberately different European trail territories — E8/Via Carpatica in Romania, Ciclovia Alpe Adria Radweg in Italy and Via Dinarica Green Karst in Slovenia — the project will demonstrate how existing visitor flows can better benefit local communities,
SMEs, social economy organisations and rural areas.

Testing one common approach across three geographically distant and contrasting trail ecosystems creates a European laboratory: what works across all three reveals transferable principles, while their differences show what must be adapted locally.

TRAILVALUE works bottom-up: it maps where tourism value is created, retained or lost; empowers Trail Value Communities to co-design solutions; and tests 6–9 Trail Value Solutions in three real-life Living Labs through a Collect → Reflect → Adapt → Retest cycle. Proven solutions will be embedded through local governance and financing arrangements and transformed into a European Trail Value Blueprint, further tested with at least 10 additional European trail territories.

TRAILVALUE's ambition is simple but transformative: a successful trail should not only bring visitors through a territory — it should leave more value behind.