Description (EN): Encompassing the second most beautiful part of the river Danube after its Delta, the Mehedinti – Borski region best assets for sustainable growth and development lies in their breath-taking views from the Iron Gates area. Struggling its way amid the Carpathian and the Balkan Mountains, Danube created one of the most impressive gorges that can be seen in whole Europe and with it, a boundless resource for the tourism sector. In spite of that, its potential is far to be used at a proper level by the actors involved in this economic sector – especially by the local ones – or by the local authorities or institutions that are entitled to pursue a smart growth for the region and a better life for its inhabitants, which are actually living very close to the poverty threshold as they are involved mostly in subsistence agriculture – related activities and are occupying ones of the top worst positions at national levels regarding unemployment, youth migration and its subsequent phenomena of population ageing. Even if it’s generally accepted that the tourism development would represent a boost for local economy that would generate jobs and thus mitigate most of those negative indicators, only a small amount of initiatives with concrete results have been implemented in the last years. Of these, the most efficient ones were sustained through IPA and other EU funds and a good few of them were implemented by the representatives of the current partnership.
The Territorial analysis of the Romania-Serbia Cross Border Cooperation Programme describes the tourism sector in the CB area by having difficulties in “increasing the tourism demand sufficiently enough as to exploit the infrastructural asset available”. In Mehedinti – Borski area the conclusion is fully sustained by the numbers officially available for 2014: only 51.818 persons have visited Mehedinti and 56.789 Borski and they have spent a total of 248.437 nights, which represents an average of 599 nights/1000 inhabitants. The same indicator which is used in E.U. to analyse the sustainability of tourism was in 2013, for the EU-28 area, equal with 5209 nights/1000 inhabitants - almost 90% higher than our targeted region’s one. Inside the region are also important disparities: if Majdanpek area had 22.523 tourists who spent 43.596 nights in 2014, Negotin and its surroundings were visited by only 2.903 people that stayed for 6.430 nights. The same situation is in Mehedinti, where Danube’s Gorge area is by far the most visited part of the county, leaving to a great distance the Northern and Eastern zones, which also have significant touristic attractions. Even there is an increase related to the previous years, the demand is still under existing capacity and for sure, far under the region’s potential.
After the successful experiences had in promoting the Iron Gates area, the partnership is pursuing now a new approach that aims to integrate the rest of Mehedinti and Borski territory in the area’s touristic offer, to present the activities that could bring and keep a visitor here for a longer period, to increase the visibility and functionality of niche-tourism attractions and to provide better knowledge for local stakeholders involved in this sector. Thus, the overall objective of the Project “ 7 Wonders of Mehedinti and Borski” is closely and strongly associated with the no. 4-2 one’s of the Romania – Serbia CBC Programme: to develop the targeted area’s tourism economy based on the sustainable use of the natural and cultural heritage, to create capacities and skills for high quality tourism services, to create all the required conditions for innovative cross border partnerships and to improve tourist informational infrastructure.
The foreseen outputs are designed to have a practical value that would be of use both on short and medium-long terms for the targeted activity sectors and beneficiaries: The research of the available natural and cultural resources from Mehedinti and Borski, resulted from the first activity proposed in the Implementation Work package, will make full use for the Project’s purposes and will be shared with any interested person or authority by publishing it in three languages on the websites of the partners; Five conferences planned as complex events with a important training and success experiences sharing component, delivered by representatives of entities significantly active at European level in the respective domains and also with a practical part, consisting in establishment of five cross-border cooperation structures in the envisaged domains. Through these events, 250 persons will gain better knowledge in using specific natural and cultural resources for tourism development and 5 niche-tourism sectors will have a common, Romanian-Serbian representative structure. Four communication instruments will be created through the activities 3.7-3.10, in order to underline and increase the area’s visibility and attractiveness for tourists. 3000 copies of a gourmet guide entitled “Gastronomy of two Empires”, 3000 DVD’s with thematic movies and 3000 guides for hunting tourism and active vacations will target at least the same numbers of potential visitors, directly or through the regional public stakeholders or tourism-operators. Also, twenty natural and cultural objectives from the both sides of the Danube will have new, modern indicators made by an innovative method.
Besides the direct beneficiaries above enunciated, the Project aims to create or increase the premises for a sustainable, smart growth of the targeted region and its over 414.000 inhabitants and also for the development of touristic services structure. The accommodation facilities owners/administrators ( 227 registered and ranked properties in the targeted region) and public alimentation structures, tourist information centres ( 8 active) as well as over 150 other tourism-related small businesses (cars & boats renting services, local guides, tours providers, souvenir producers, etc.) can be included too between the beneficiaries.
The approach planned is a result-oriented one, aiming to obtain the best outcomes from the existing resources of the targeted area after implementing a coherent set of measures jointly taken, with a value-for-money oriented budget. Starting from the existing strengths and weaknesses and taking into consideration the various threats existing, the partners stressed the opportunities that were integrated into objectives pursued through the hereby proposed operation. Cross-border character of the measures appears to be in a cause/effect relation with the desired sustainable development of the targeted area, as the used resource - natural and cultural heritage - is a common one and the key factors (niche-tourism opportunities, the other tourist attractions) that are increasing area’s desirability for visitors have a much stronger effect if promoted and sustained together. Previous experiences of the partners and the feed-back received from other stakeholders involved in tourism activities are eloquent: joint, cross-border packages for tourists that are including visits and activities on the other bank of the Danube are increasing the duration of their staying, their expenditures an also their satisfaction, directly expressed or by favorable recommendations on social-media or booking/traveling impressions websites or even through repeated come-backs. Not at least, a fragmented, national level approach would probably increase the financial resources necessary for implementation and could generate only fragmented, partial results.
The originality and novelty of the “7 Wonders of Mehedinti and Borski” is coming mainly from its orientation to the niche-tourism sectors in a integrated, cross-border manner, targeting the both districts as a whole and designing a “product” that has all the prerequisites to become a major presence in the competition for tourists at European level, greatly increasing the region’s inhabitants living standards. Five new structures that will be able to develop actions and promote profitable tourism sectors, genuine instruments of communication meant to arouse the visitors interest and curiosity and professional realised advertising tools, with proven efficiency in other EU financed projects – are all methods tested and used by other successful tourist destinations, but for the first time in the targeted region as a whole.
Read more Achievements (EN): After the successful experiences had in promoting the Iron Gates area, the partnership was pursuing a new approach that aimed to integrate the rest of Mehedinti and Borski territory in the area’s touristic offer, to present the activities that could bring and keep a visitor there for a longer period, to increase the visibility and functionality of niche-tourism attractions and to provide better knowledge for local stakeholders involved in this sector. Thus, the overall objective of the Project “7 Wonders of Mehedinti and Borski” is closely and strongly associated with one of the objectives of the Interreg-IPA Cross-border Cooperation Romania – Serbia Programme: to develop the targeted area’s tourism economy based on the sustainable use of the natural and cultural heritage, to create capacities and skills for high quality tourism services, to create all the required conditions for innovative cross border partnerships and to improve tourist informational infrastructure.
The originality and novelty of the “7 Wonders of Mehedinti and Borski” is coming mainly from its orientation to the niche-tourism sectors in an integrated, cross-border manner, targeting both districts as a whole and designing a “product” that has all the prerequisites to become a major presence in the competition for tourists at European level, greatly increasing the living standard of the region’s inhabitants. The five new structures that were developed in the region used genuine instruments of communication meant to arouse the visitors` interest and curiosity and professionally realised advertising tools, with proven efficiency in other EU financed projects.
Achieved results:
5 cross-border cooperation structures developed in the field of tourism.
1 research in the field of natural and cultural resources of Mehedinti – Borski area elaborated.
5 new communication instruments created.
250 representatives of the stakeholders in the field of tourism attended trainings.
More details can be found by accessing:
https://promehedinti.ro/en/category/7-minuni-din-mehedinti-si-borski/
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Expected Outputs (EN): Project Result 1 (P.R.1): Increased capacities and skills for 250 representatives of local stakeholders in order to obtain high quality tourism services in Mehedinti and Borski region.
Project Result 2 (P.R.2): New cross-border cooperation structures established for enhancing the use of 5 niche-tourism sectors as resources for tourism sector development in the Mehedinti/Borski region..
Project Result 3 (P.R.3): New information tools for visitors, potential visitors and stakeholders involved in tourism development in the Project’s targeted area.
The contribution of these results to the Programme’s result indicator PA4-RI3 is a direct one, as the outputs produced will consist in new skills acquired by representatives of public and private sector involved in tourism development who will learn from the best practices existing at EU level about how to use efficiently the area’s resources, new partnerships materialized in cross-border cooperation structures in niche-tourism sectors, new informative and promotional instruments. Also, a new research published in three languages will be available free of costs for any interested private or public person. The most of these “touristic products”, as they are defined by the Programme, are new on the local tourism sector, even they are successfully used by other regions in Europe in order to increase their attractiveness for visitors and by thus, the local economies and living standards for their inhabitants. Also, the Project and its foreseen results and outputs will produce an estimated increase of the number of the visitors in Mehedinti and Borski (Programme specific result indicator PA4RI1) with at least 10000 more persons and will generate directly at least 520 overnights thus contributing to PA4RI1 indicator.
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