Project budget – 118,812.25 euros

• Budget of the Lead Partner – 61,233.71 euros
• Budget per partner – 57,578.54 euros

Contract term: 15 months

Implementation period: 18.10.2016 – 17.01.2018

Territorial scope: Blagoevgrad District, Bulgaria and Eastern Region of Macedonia

General objective: Strengthening cross-border cooperation between people and institutions in the region in order to jointly address common challenges and use the untapped potential for the development of sustainable tourism in the cross-border region.

Specific objectives: Use of ICT opportunities to promote the types of tourist products and services offered in the region to achieve a balanced development of year-round tourism in the region.

Targeted activities to impact the socio-economic development of the region by pooling the efforts of stakeholders and networking.

Target groups: Tourist companies, tour operators and tourist information centers, local authorities, representatives of SMEs and NGOs working in the field of tourism and serving the tourist flow, youth and vulnerable groups, mass media.

Planned activities:

Activity 1 – Creation of common databases for tourist routes

Activity 2 – Creating a common interactive online platform

Activity 3 – Organizing and conducting training and workshops

Activity 4 – Conduct a webinar on working with the platform

Activity 5 – Development of two thematic tourist routes

Activity 6 – Development of a guide for tour guides and animators in tourism and training

Activity 7 – Holding tourism forums

Activity 8 – Promotional campaigns

Planned results:

• A database has been created for the proposed tourist routes and sites in the Blagoevgrad region, Bulgaria and the Eastern region of Macedonia;
• Created online platform for visualizing tourist sites and routes;
• Shared management of the online platform between organizations from Bulgaria and Macedonia;
• Developed two regional tourist routes with a promotional clip and a digital walk for each;
• Held two regional tourism forums on both sides of the border involving more than 100 representatives of the target groups;
• Conducted trainings and seminars in the field of tourism on networking, using ICT for sustainable tourism development, supporting entrepreneurship and training tour guides with more than 170 participants covered.