EU Baltic Sea Strategy - Tourism

Flagship Project 12.9 - Promote the cultural and natural heritage

Carrying out FP 12.9 is aimed at promoting the cultural and natural heritage, which are the basis of establishing an attractive tourist offer of the Baltic Sea destinations. Efficient advertising is based on making use of modern marketing tools, which make it possible to pass the information on to the potential target recipient. However, the specificity of the region and fierce competition with other recognizable tourist destinations result in the necessity of establishing broad cooperation with the private sector, oriented at creating common cross-border tourist offer. Actions undertaken in the FP 12.9 framework have to be carried out in close cooperation with the local tourist industry, which is the organizer of services in the field of tourist movement. The created tourist packages have to be available on the global tourist market, therefore an important stage in the whole enterprise will be getting through to the operators, who are a key element in the process of developing and efficient functioning of tourist products sales network.

The tourist offer in the Baltic Sea region has to be adjusted to the global trends and tourist preferences, which will increase the competitiveness of the region on the world market of tourist services. The development of diverse offer basing on exploiting unique natural and cultural resources will enhance the region’s image of an attractive tourist destination. Achieving such results will be possible only by means of the cross-border cooperation and involvement of many tourist environment entities operating in this sector.

Enjoy South Baltic! – the main theme of the FP 12.9 second implementation phase

The monitoring of tourist projects carried out in the frames of available Territorial Cooperation Programs, which was introduced in the first phase of the project, allowed to investigate the undertaken initiatives and define priority direction of tourist offer development in the Baltic Sea region. Continuing these activities in the second phase will play a crucial role in the whole process of launching tourist products on the target markets. It will allow to create a knowledge base of the initiatives and actions determining the development of tourism, which were undertaken in the Baltic region

Some of the actions will be co-financed from the funds acquired from the South Baltic Programme to carry out the “Enjoy South Baltic! Joint actions promoting the South Baltic area as a tourist destination” project.

The tourism projects management model, founded within ESB! project, ensures synergy between the regionally implemented tourist policies, which results in creating a strong, recognizable brand of the whole Baltic Sea region as one tourist destination, set on strong foundations, i.e. European cultural routes or natural assets included on the UNESCO world heritage list. Moreover, the monitoring activities will strengthen the cross-border cooperation and guarantee efficient use of the results of other ongoing projects. The identified development directions will help to create the most suitable and appropriate tourist offers, which will be developed and implemented in cooperation to the SMEs.

Monitoring objectives:

ensuring synergy with the other undertaken actions and ongoing projects
enriching the results of the survey analysis
establishing knowledge base for the sustainable tourist development
forming the basis for product creation and implementation
creating a source of information for the SMEs
using and popularizing the up-to-date results of the project
creating a source of information for the European Commission

In addition, conclusions drawn from the monitoring will be used by other key projects coordinators as current and reliable source of information, which may be used to develop and implement tourist projects.

FP 12.9 and ESB! objectives and results:

Objectives:

Increasing the competitiveness of the Baltic Sea region by developing and improving the quality of tourist offer and services based on cultural and natural environment qualities, which are well-adjusted to the trends observed in the tourism industry and which satisfy customers’ needs and preferences.
Improving and enhancing the image of the region, considered to be a rising star among other international tourist destinations.

These objectives will be achieved by close cooperation with entities in charge of developing and promoting tourism, as well as with the private sector, which is both the key partner in the tourist offers management system and a direct tourist services provider.

Expected results defined as immediate effects of the project implementation:

Creating and launching a new cross-border and concise tourist offer based on natural and cultural heritage distinct features;
increasing awareness of tourist attractiveness of the South Baltic region among tour operators doing their business on the developing trade markets defined in the project;
establishing long-term cross-border inter-institutional and industrial relations;
developing a cross-border tourist offer sales system.

FP 12.9 and ESB! Target Groups

1). Domestic (Baltic) tour operators, tourist agencies and other tourist branch representatives, who organize inbound tourism and without whom it is not possible to launch tourist product packages on the market. Broadening the current tourist offer with new products and output markets will be a direct benefit due to the participation of the group in implementing the FP 12.9. Free advertising of tourist offers directed to individual and group recipients will be granted, together with an elaborate sales network of the provided tourist offers and services.

2). Foreign tour operators, tourist agencies and other tourist branch representatives from the countries defined as far-reaching output markets for tourist offers and services provided in the Baltic Sea region. This group has been considered a key element in communicating the offer to potential foreign recipients and in acting as an agent in the sales system (presenting the ESB! offer to the customers). The group will benefit from the project due to both the broadening of the sales offer and increasing the companies’ turnover.

In the initial phase of the ESB! project implementation the analysis of the perceived attractiveness of the region will be conducted, accompanied by the monitoring of project initiatives carried out in the Baltic Sea region. On the basis of these investigations the tourist offer development directions will be defined and the output sales markets and target recipients will be identified. In the subsequent phase the project partners, together with the domestic tourist industry, will be working on the creation of concrete cross-border tourist products packages, matching the themes differentiated during the analysis. The final phase of the project will be focused on launching the developed products on the market. To do it, domestic tour operators and tourist agencies will have to establish cooperation with the tourist industry from the target countries, which will form a communication platform with the target recipient – the customer, the tourist, who the entire offer was prepared for.

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