The project responds to a common challenge of the area, namely the cultural and historical heritage of the cross-border region is not capitalized to its potential value in sustainable cross-border tourism. The cross-border area regions are focused on the development of maritime tourism by neglecting the development and prioritization of alternative tourism such as the cultural and historical tourism. On the other hand, seasonality is a major problem in the tourism industry in both countries, causing low returns on investment, overuse and underuse of facilities in high and low season respectively, as well as seasonal employment of staff and high unemployment subsidizes during the unemployment season. Finally, there is lack of an integrated marketing strategy to increase regional competitiveness as a common tourism product.Promotion remains outdated and there is urgent need for common action to upgrade online marketing.
project approach to addressing the common challenges will be based on the collaboration of all partners by identifying these challenges since the beginning. However, during the project life, other challenges may arise for solutions and each partner will appoint a representative to create a workgroup that will be faced with unidentified potential challenges.
A strong point of this project is collaboration between public and private institutions, which will exchange knowledge and experience in order to develop a strong and unified tourism strategy, following the steps of the successful http://www.corale.eu platform from TPNM Project, which aims creating a competitive tourism product in the region to absorb tourist markets from China along with strengthening the relationship between Albania and Greece.
Moreover, the expertise of travel agents will be used and B2B meetings will be arranged, in order to create a tourism product that is attractive for tourists all year round.
The overall objective of the project is: “Promoting the Region as a unique destination for cultural & historical tourism”.Cultural heritage & historical tourism development allows the use of traditional sources to generate income,diversify local products, target broader tourism market, increase visibility of the region & interest for visiting it throughout the year.
The maind outputs will be identification of a common CBC cultural & historical routes, focusing on three historical periods (Ancient MiddleAges, Modern),future demand of the tourism market including new markets such as China, the establishment of six touristic Info Kiosks in areas with high accessibility to tourists,the public promotion of developed products (brochures,website and promotional video). Prioritizing tourism beyond maritime tourism will be the added value of this project. The project moto is GET Travel Experience in CBC GR/AL.
