WaterTour – Developing Improvement of competitiveness of SMEs and watertourism regions by innovative strategies and technologies

The project was initiated by the Vorpommern Regional Tourism Board (Lead Partner) and developed by 4 project partners: Midland Regional Authority/ Ireland, Association of forestry producers/ Portugal, South Transdanubian Regional Development Agency/ Hungary and Lahti health control and environmental protection centre/ Finland.

In addressing the issue of maximising regional tourism potential of inland waterways as a mean of generating economic activity challenges exist: insufficient and inappropriate use of instruments and tools of quality management, regional marketing, professional product development and distribution, lack of cooperation between SMEs and communities.

All the partner regions possess similar situations: hinterland and transversing of regions to other tourist destinations, high diversity of tourism attractions and services,varying standards in infrastructure and services, high seasonality of tourism activities, different standards in information systems are common.

Ireland, Finland and Germany possess developed tourism infrastructure and activities on inland waterways , but are deficient in the promotion of their regions throughout Europe, linking waterside activities to create synergies between SMEs, extending the tourism season to strengthen viability of SMEs.

In Portugal and Hungary water based tourism is at the earliest stages of development. Thus, they will be affored the opportunity to learn from the experiences and knowledge gained by their European counterparts.

As each partner possesses competence in a particular area, one of the project objectives is to build on these competencies and allow all the partners to benefit from the synergies of interregional exchange, know how and best practice. Competitive watertourism on inland waterways depends to a large extent on the quality of services offered, quality of infrastructure and facilities and the co-operation between SMEs and communities. Thus the project results will affect, directly and indirectly, the SMEs, municipalities and communities involved and will deliver strategies and tools to harness the regional tourism potential in a more effective way. Regional and interregional networks will facilitate exchange know-how and experiences.

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the economic situation and competetiveness of SMEs involved with water based in the project regions by offering quality and specific activity basedproducts.

 access to know-how, experiences and best practises by establishing intra-regional and inter-regional co-operations between communities and SMEs and between SMEs
 applying policies and strategies to ensure the developmetn of quality infrastructure to enable the development of sustainable water based tourism activities whilst taking cognisance of the environment
 developing tools and methods to market the regions for both the internal market of the country and the European market
 improving regional information systems

Areas and institutions in the project