Integrated marketing initiative to promote Banat region.

Our project aims to exploit the natural and cultural richness of the border territory and the common values and to aggregate the dispersed efforts of attracting tourists in the region through a joint cross-border marketing initiative. The project tackles common challenges identified jointly in the border region, such as: poor accessibility, especially in relation to information and communication technologies, underutilized tourism potential, shortage in integrated tourism products which lead to a low perception of the region as a tourist destination. Our aim is to position Banat territory as a cross-border tourist destination and to aggregate the tourist assets from the border region in joint marketing initiatives. The overall objective of the project is to increase the cooperation capacity to promote Banat region as tourist destination. The result of the project will be an integrated marketing joint initiative for promoting Banat region - VISITBANAT- which will increase the visibility of the region and will have a benefic impact on the regions incoming tourists number, contributing to the local development of tourist economy. The main outputs of the project are: · Two Photo-Video Centers for Cross-border Cultural Marketing. · Improved capacities of 20 entrepreneurs, owners of small and medium sized rural tourist facilities to promote their business through digital marketing by capitalization of tourist attractions and improved knowledge and practical skills for 40 local community members to develop photo-video content for tourism promotion. · An itinerant cross-border Short film & photography Festival to promote Banat region. The target groups are the local community members from the eligible area, mainly young people, professional and amateur photographers, professional and amateur cameramans (160); and general public, visitors, tourists and other interested stakeholders as audience (2000). · A joint marketing channel developed - the Photo-Video Open Platform. · Two joint marketing instruments for cross-border tourism developed: a photography album and a multimedia DVD to promote Banat region. Building human capacity in the cross border area should be an ongoing process which can be maintained by cooperation initiatives with adequate learning infrastructure which will ensure the sustainability of the actions beyond the project implementation. The project will create two Photo-Video Centers for Cross-border Cultural Marketing, logistical resource centers during the project that will build capacity for the Romanian and Serbian partners to further develop training programs. Through 3 training sessions oriented towards market demands the project will ·improve capacity for entrepreneurs, owners of small and medium sized rural tourist facilities to promote their business by capitalization of tourist attractions and will ·improve knowledge and practical skills for local community members. Given the fact that LP is a certified provider for Adult Professional Development the activity will increase access to employment opportunities for 40 people from the cross border-region. In order to increase the visibility of touristic potential and to promote Banat as a desirable tourist destination an integrated approach is needed and all actors must be actively involved. Our plan is to capacitate local community members from both sides of the border, especially the young generation, by organizing an integrated cross-border event. The itinerant cross-border Short film & photography Festival aims to promote Banat region, to raise awareness about the potential of the region through photography exhibitions and short films and to increase local community participation in tourism promotion activities. The second step of our approach aims to continue to capacitate community members in tourist promotion activities while promoting Banat region to the potential tourists beyond the lifecycle of the project. This will be achieved through an Open Photo-Video web platform which will promote Banat region through photography and films on the following topics: · Cultural heritage both tangible and intangible (e.g. historic landmarks, traditions, practices and customs of the communities in Banat, legends and tales of places), · Artists and craftsmen (e.g. contemporary artists, traditional crafts: manufacture of tiles and bricks, traditional carpentry), · Natural heritage, · Wine and food, · Eco tourism and outdoor activities. The final step will be to develop joint marketing instruments for cross-border tourism - Photography album and multimedia DVD which will promote Banat region. While the most activities are addressing a general target group: · local community members from the eligible area, · mainly young people, general public, visitors, tourists; two activities are adressing to owners of small and medium sized rural tourist facilities. By providing an e-marketing training we will improve capacities of 20 entrepreneurs, owners of small and medium sized rural tourist facilities to promote their business through digital marketing and capitalization of tourist attractions. Our approach to this group, although it starts in a classic way with a training session, is an innovative approach. Based on the data collected during the training session - current resources and business needs regarding marketing and promotion - we will develop 20 customized digital marketing campaigns. The aim is to increase the number of small & medium size rural tourist facilities that promote Banat region by integrating in their marketing strategy tourism attractions from the region. The added value of the approach is that by generating traffic on the sites the marketing campaigns will eventually turn their audiences to potential customers and will have a benefic economic impact on the community.

- Integrated marketing campaign for Banat region: VISITBANAT. - increased visibility of Banat region. The results contribute to the programme result indicator. VISITBANAT is a new “touristic product”, an integrated marketing initiative for promoting Banat region which will position the territory as a cross-border tourist destination.