Interreg IVA Two Seas Project - ACT submitted

ERA21 Ltd worked with 5 partners to develop an Interrg IVA Two Seas proposal for the 8th call - which closes on the 8th July 2011.  The application has been submitted a week before the deadline.

The proposal, "Adapting to Changes in Tourism" (ACT) aims to strengthen the programme area's competitive & cohesive position in the tourism industry by increasing visitor stays &/or numbers, improving their experience & forecasting trends. This will be done by:

  1. Putting into practice new forms of market intelligence & communication mechanisms to address urgent challenges resulting from rapid information & technological changes 
  2. Addressing the changing roles of governance to create more responsive, self-supporting tourism partnerships & provide strategic area overviews to ensure consistent messages are agreed & promoted by all sectors

The tourism industry, in partner areas, shares the struggle to keep up & maximise the use of new information technology following the rapid development of travel & social networking sites. In addition they are finding it increasing difficult to cope with a major growth & new sources of information, making it difficult to have good market intelligence to better anticipate & provide for new markets for cross-border visitors.

All partner areas are facing decreasing support from the public sector & have to find new ways to finance their joint actions, e.g. visitors increasingly use the internet to check availability, quality & local information, by-passing traditional tourist information centres, central booking & quality controls. Search engines from different countries do not currently profile the different partner areas, so opportunities are lost for cross-border tourism.

The partners aim to maximise current information technology & communication systems, using the power of their different expertise to improve the competitiveness, sustainability & promotion of their areas, supported by innovative IT techniques. Partners are committed to creating new relationships between public sector & SMEs in the tourism industry to safeguard & enhance local products.