Preserving and protecting the environment and promoting resource efficiency.
Protecting and promoting natural and cultural resources
The overall project objective is to increase the tourism appeal and visibility of the cross-border region through sustainable models that encourage the development of new innovative tourism products for the sustainable enhancement, innovative use and marketing of cultural heritage (castles, palaces, villas) and the exceptional ecotypes of planned landscapes (vineyards, gardens, parks) with the use of green technologies.
The MerlinCV project will contribute to promoting the cross-border tourism region. In order to exploit the untapped potential of the cultural, natural and gastronomic heritage in the Italo-Slovenian cross-border area, the project will develop innovative, integrated and thematic tourism products focussing on sustainable tourism. Taking into account the environmental challenges, the project will offer relevant, European level solutions for the development of sustainable and thematic tourism; to this end, a large number of activities will aim to create new tourism products, training stakeholders with a particular focus on food and wine and typical local products. The project activities will be planned on the basis of a study or with the help of good practice in similar environments. A web and mobile application will be created to serve as a database of the local tourist offer and to assist in planning tourism itineraries.
Several pilot projects will be conducted with the aim of increasing the capacity of local tourism operators:
workshops, networks, local supply communities, personalised itineraries, festivals and stories in tourism.
One of the results of the project is to create innovative marketing approaches that exploit the potential of the most "photogenic and narratable" integrated sites, which will be used to present new thematic itineraries - approaches that, in the era of social networks, strongly affect the choices of visitors when planning their trips. The marketing approaches will be tested and adjusted through concrete pilot activities (the web application and the activities proposed in WP 3.2.). In the framework of WP 3.2, 10 training workshops will be held to increase the skills of tourism operators, which will help them to increase their capacity to improve tourism products and group them into thematic interest areas in the field of sustainable tourism. At the same time, they will offer concrete solutions and the basis for a more environmentally friendly way to operate tourism services. Two integrated tourism products will be created under WP 3.2. The CLO (PP6) will launch an effective CLO model and a promoter/animator who will act as a start-up company; together with the web application these results represent integrated products that bring together a combination of various products and services, designed to meet the needs of tourists at the time of their visit, at the same time contributing to increasing the quality and diversification of the tourist offer of a destination, while also increasing its visibility. At the same time, the promoter - Merlin (at CLO) and the application promote an individualized tourist experience. Two other pilot projects will be dedicated to the use of stories to create the innovative Escape Garden product and the itinerant festival that will connect the lesser-known elements of cultural heritage and tourism with the products of local operators.
Lead Partner
Project partner 1
Project partner 2
Project partner 3
Project partner 4
Project partner 5
Project partner 6
Project partner 7
1. Improving the offer and competitiveness of cross-border tourism with the use of cultural heritage through the creation of innovative tourism products:
Project partners will promote a broader dialogue involving various stakeholders. New tourist products will be created based on examples and the transfer of good practices, as well as new innovative valorizations and re-uses of cultural and natural heritage. New products will be connected through attractive ways of telling different stories. Our objective is to design pilot new tourism products based on swot analysis of statistical and other processing of large databases, as well as innovative ways of direct interaction between different sectors. Moreover, we will rely on examples of good practice in the project, which integrate regional specificities between cultural and natural heritage.
2. Increasing the capacity of tourism providers for innovative and creative creation and improvement of tourism products:
We will establish mechanisms for the creation of innovative integrated tourism products, concepts and products of sustainable planning that connect natural and cultural heritage for the full experience of the natural and cultural environment. These new products will be implemented through the preparation of educational materials for existing SMEs in the cross-border region and the organization of workshops published online, special package organizers and a web application to create personal experiences and analysis of visitor habits. A special form of tourism organization is also the pilot model of so-called Linkman as a kind of mediator of products and market adaptation.
3. Greater recognition of family tourism as green, active, and attractive: the project will prepare several innovative marketing models of tourist products with various stakeholders, where special attention will be paid to the most visited web formats and extended networks of modern media, including obtaining feedback.