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This project was
part-financed by the
European Union
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| Project Description | |
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Co-operation Area:
MariTour is an Interreg IIIB and TACIS project, developed in the Baltic Sea Region.
Background:
Potentials of the fast-growing maritime tourism market are not fully used in the Balic Sea Regions. Its segments (sailboating, trad. sailship events, cruise tourism, exhibitions) have common characteristics:
(1) Tourist choice for a region as the BSR is based on its aggregated image & quality, not of single harbours/ countries; each region benefits from improvements in all others;
(2) They contribute to spatially balanced economic development, based on a network of major and small harbours/ cities;
(3) Success depends on local, but joint, initiative.
Cooperative actions targeted at specific occasions have set the stage for more continuous systematic co-action incl. common marketing, exhibitions, event planning, market observation, benchmarking. This needs a stable institutional basis to be established within the framework of MariTour.
Origin:
MariTour was started by partners from 2 previous initiatives:
(1) Temporary cooperation “Baltic Sail 2006” to offer trad. sailship festivals;
(2) Interreg IIC/ IIIB project SuPortNet (www.suportnet.com) a cooperation of boat harbours to prepare physical improvement plans and to set up internet-based tourist information now part of a commercial system.
MariTour includes partners from these two, plus new ones with a tourism marketing function.
MariTour focuses on sailboating, traditional sailship events and related exhibitions.
Objectives:
Increase maritime tourism in the BSR, maximise local benefits from this and attract young people to this type of recreation/ tourism.
Workpackages:
(1) Create a permanent institution responsible for marketing of Baltic Sea Region as a "First Class Sailing Resort"
Background:
First marketing efforts have been made in SuPortNet II and Baltic Sail (www.suportnet.com; www.nv-portpilot.com). But the Baltic Sea is still not presented as „One Region“.
Aim:
Market and Promote the Baltic Sea as a „First class sailing resort“ for boating, (traditional) sailing ship tours and maritime events.
Increase number of sailing tourists. Some tasks continue beyond the project period. They need a body assuming responsibility.
Activities:
- Establish an interim institution for baltic wide marketing in the field of sailing tourism
- Prepare provisional working infrastructure
- Search and involve new partners
- Arrange preliminary financial plan of the institution
- Prepare future statutes
- Foundation of final institution at the end of the project
- Implementation of tasks developed by the Work Packages 2 and 3
- Future central booking office for traditional ships in the BSR
- Future central contact and information point for maritime events and regattas in the BSR
(2) Design and Implement joint marketing actions
Background:
Events:
Several attractive (maritime) events in the BSR take place week after week but due to lack of marketing many of them are still largely unknown to the public.
Consequence:
- Lack of visitors and sponsors
- No economic benefit
Traditional Sailing:
Operator of traditional sailing ships are in most cases non profit organisations
Consequences:
-Lack of money and shortage of men power necessary to design and implement marketing measure
-Lack of information
- Many traditional sailing ships still unknown to the public
Aim:
Increase benefits from maritime tourism to cities and regions
Improve marketing of traditional sailing ships in the BSR
Activities:
- Organise partner’s joint participation at boat shows, fairs, events and tourism exhibitions.
- Establish and maintain a maritime event calendar and yacht harbours & clubs-map for all countries of the BSR (better connection and harmonisation of events)
- Establish and maintain a databank for traditional ships - Databank will serve as basis of a booking tool
- Establish a traditional Sailship locator: Improve the availability of traditional ships by time and location
- Support operators of traditional ships in the field of marketing and promotion
- Enlargement and further improvement of the harbour information system www.suportnet.com
(3) Improve the availability and transnational accessibility of market information, leading to concrete service & operation improvements in the harbours, more targeted marketing and higher local benefits
Background
Visitor statistics:
No harmonised data collection across countries - many boat harbours do not collect any statistics
Consequence:
- Insufficient knowledge of the market, its volume and structural development - no solid basis for marketing
Benchmarking:
Harbour operators often don’t have background information to assess their operational and financial operations
Consequence:
- Municipal harbour operators have severe problems to cover their costs
- This leads to unwanted demands for municipal subsidies, which limits municipalities’ ability to invest
- There is a wide scope for reducing subsidisation needs through improvement of services offered, and by making harbour operations less costly (incl. public-private partnerships)
- International benchmarking can provide hints for such possibilities [as demonstrated by existing benchmarking system in the US]
Aim:
Make harbour operation more efficient and more financially sustainable.
Improve the availibility of market information in the field of sport boat tourism
Activities:
- Operate and maintain databases with market information
- Collect international comparable harbour visitor statistics
- Development of and agreement on a benchmarking concept considering existing examples, e.g. from the U.S.
- Definition of data/ information to be gathered for benchmarking,
- Determination of data standards and formats
- Agreement of standards for (anonymised) publication of data
- Implementation of the benchmarking concept in the participating regions, Promotion among non-partner regions to participate
- Data processing and conclusions for individual locations (harbour operations, public-private cooperation, better mutual benefit with urban development
- Establishment of standard figures for the assessment of local-regional economic benefits
Generate market data for harbour benchmarking
Mayor Outputs:
- A joint institution (Baltic Sailing Association) functioning beyond the project with clear tasks and execution capacity;
- Joint maritime events (sailship festivals, sailing competitions)
- Joint presentations of partners at exhibitions;
- New data base on tradtional ships regularly updated on the booking situation of major sailships to allow better planning and search for vacancies;
- Improved market information on sailing tourism accessible across borders in the BSR;
- Harbour benchmarking identifying potentials for improving harbours’ contribution to local economies;
- Internet-based tourist information for sailors (installed by SuPortNet) geographically extended (towards CEEC) and with more information on land-based attractions.
Project Duration: Jan. 2006 - Dec. 2007
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