On the grounds that Cultural Tourism acting as a fundamental part of cultural heritage and sustainable tourism making up almost 40% of tourism revenues globally, a wide list of digital initiatives have been taken during the last few years. In particular, advanced technologies (such as 360o photo, Augmented Reality, 3D scanning, etc.) in conjunction with hybrid skills (i.e. technical and non-technical) of businesses’ digital transformation have been providing endless possibilities in the field of cultural tourism towards enriching tourists experiences based on cultural heritage. An example of such an approach is depicted through the Tourism 4.0 Heritage+ approach aiming at bridging the needs of local communities for communication of heritage values with sustainable development (Arctur d.o.o, 2019). Another example is EU UNESCO 4ALL TOUR, a project that has made art accessible to visually impaired and blind people by combining tactile exploration with audio data (www.unesco4all-tour.eu). Those examples reveal that heritage tourism is increasingly moving towards a new digital era.

However, the COVID-19 crisis has a massive impact on the tourism-related cultural sector, having shone a light both on the challenges endured by people working in the sector and on how cultural life is weakened by the global lockdown (Compendium of Cultural Policies & Trends, 2020). In fact, with 67 million fewer travelers, the pandemic crisis puts in jeopardy the most crucial parts of cultural tourism (UNESCO, 2020). With almost 13% of museums being under the threat of never re-opening, more than 80% of UNESCO World Heritage properties being locked and most people working on tourism-related jobs being currently unemployed, the need to move towards digitization becomes even more urgent. With digital jobs becoming more crucial than ever, new skills are being required among the professional profiles of culture and tourism. It is thus rational for adults seeking job opportunities in the heritage tourism sector to be more equipped with digital competences to form a more resilient tourism workforce (UNWTO, 2020).