Description (EN): The project aims to boost visitation and create new livelihood opportunities in cross-border communities whilst developing & promoting unique tourist experiences built around traditional work cultures and lifestyles as part of Carpathian Living Heritage Destination.
Partners will turn local cultural assets into 52 market-ready products, providing diverse entrepreneurial opportunities to local population, motivating to continue traditional practices, cultivating respect for heritage preservation.
Thus the project will help to diversify regions’ tourism offer, facilitate cross-border movement of travelers, support local revenues and tourism industry profitability.
By applying various e-travel vehicles and market penetration techniques, project will approach new tourist segments and will improve image of target locations as cultural tourism destinations on domestic and international markets, including under the common identity of Carpathian Living Heritage.
Read more Achievements (EN): These cross-border regions are full of undiscovered heritage along with pristine landscapes and warm-hearted people. Being at top demand of modern cultural visitor, diverse traditional lifestyles and local work cultures of Carpathian peoples at the same time gradually vanish due to technology progress and are undervalued as means of economic regeneration. Regions face ongoing challenges of realizing their cultural potential in tourism, providing decent offerings, securing new markets. Whilst there is local enthusiasm, communities lack creativity, knowledge on how to exploit their heritage potential, travel industry connections. Although, there are many attractions, areas are still relatively unknown as heritage tourism destinations.
Therefore, the Project aims to boost visitation and create new livelihood opportunities in cross-border communities whilst developing and promoting unique tourist experiences built around traditional work cultures and lifestyles as part of Carpathian Living Heritage Destination.
The project team in cooperation with creative tourism service providers and talented residents of the target regions (heritage safeguard) has developed 55 market-ready products based on intangible living heritage assets (13 in Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine and 16 in Romania), providing a variety of opportunities for entrepreneurs and local population, motivating them to continue traditional practices and cultivating respect for heritage preservation. The project turned the lifestyle and unique life stories of individual people, distinguished by a original offer of intangible heritage, into a core of market-ready products – travel packages for weekend tours. In the project frame, the partners have identified small-scale family based entities or individuals engaged in traditional agriculture, food making and artisan activities. Travel package preparation activities relied heavily on the results of tourism market study, which helped out in business plans development for each of the tours, sales channels forecast and market communications.
Service providers for newly created living heritage products and locals of the target regions are involved by the project into community under unique brand Carpathian Living Heritage Destination GO52 Heritage Weekends (Go52). For service providers included in regional tourism packages there were conducted trainings in each of target countries. Travel agents and domestic tourism operators have tested each of the weekend tours and rated the products highly. They expressed their recommendations and wishes for the newly created GO52 offer during the cross-border online meeting.
In order to reinforce the recognition of the new opportunities for cultural tourism Go52, partners have developed unique design and produced a number of branding attributed, including branded uniform, souvenirs, demonstration stands. To promote the tourism products, the promotional teaser of weekend tours was created, which draw the attention of potential visitors to new leisure opportunities offered by small-scale businesses and individuals operating in traditional agriculture, food making and artisan activities in target regions. In addition, the partners have conducted four tours for cultural travel enthusiasts, travel bloggers and travel writers in each target country. As a result of the tours, more than 40 publications and 220 stories were published, covering more than 2.5 million people. Initially it was planned within the project that such tour would be held jointly for bloggers of the target countries, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the project team to adjust their ideas and adapt to new realities. Therefore, influencers from different countries will share their impressions of the visited places during an online meeting as part of the final international project event.
To promote the packages, the project applies innovative technologies to penetrate into the tourism market: two electronic tourism products were created – an online museum of Carpathian traditional work cultures and a virtual guide (mobile application) of the Carpathian living heritage, the partners also created twenty interpretive interpretation videos featuring lifestyle stories of people – safeguards of living heritage – bakers, shepherds, cheese makers, craftsmen, gurals, winegrowers, etc. About 5,000 visitors got their first experience of living work cultures at the Cross-Border Festival of Traditional Work Cultures in Romania, which took place on August 15-17, 2021, in Negresti Oash, Satu Mare County, Romania.
A separate achievement of the project is rich promotional literature and visual advertising, designed to captivate discerning potential visitors with unique stories / images of ordinary people, safeguards of Carpathian traditional work cultures and to make them want to visit it. These are, in particular, four editions of promotional brochures-guides “Go52 Carpathian living heritage weekends”, prepared in the national languages of the project and in English, describing thirteen packages of living heritage tours for each target country. The multilingual publication – the joint “Go52 Lifestyles Album” offers unique stories and illustrations about 23 safeguards of living heritage from the target countries. In the countries of the project, 53 thematic billboards were placed along the highways and in the central parts of cities with an invitation to visit Go52 tours. Leaflets and posters in five languages have also been issued to promote the values and benefits of the association of partners in the Go52 community.
To the project’s end, in order to communicate and share the experiences of the project participants, the project team invited all stakeholders interested in preserving the Carpathian living heritage to participate in the International Go52 Partners Online Forum, which will take place on July 21, 2022.
The cross-border project team worked efficiently during the 33 months of the project implementation period, actively communicating during live working meetings and regular online meetings. The employees and experts of the project worked harmoniously and sometimes intensively even in exceptional, in fact, force majeure circumstances, when in Ukraine, the country of the lead beneficiary of the project, martial law was declared due to the brutal invasion of the Russian Federation, which caused active military actions and bombing. We continue to do everything that depended on us to preserve the sovereignty of Ukraine and, as a result, support security on the entire European continent.
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Expected Results (EN): Project will help to diversify regions’ tourism offer, facilitate cross-border movement of travellers, support local revenues and tourism industry profitability. By implying ICT instruments and market penetration techniques, project will approach new tourist segments, improve image of target locations as cultural tourism destinations. Project events will involve counterparts in experience share, learning, increasing local performance capacity, facilitating cultural cooperation.
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