COUNTRY: Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro

CLIENT:
DAV Summit Club GmbH, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

PROJECT TITLE:
“Mountain tourism in the Peaks of the Balkans Region “

SHORT DESCRIPTION

In order to create more income for the local population, to stop abandonment of the mountain regions of the Dinaric Alps (Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo) and to bring those areas closer together, the national and local tourism organisations and hiking clubs joined forces with the GIZ to develop the Peaks of the Balkans region as one tourism destination for mountain tourism. With the development of one of the few existing worldwide transnational hiking trails through Albania Kosovo and Montenegro a common base and “backbone” for further development was set up. (www.peaksofthebalkans.com) Even though very basic tourism infrastructure for adventure and individual tourism starts to develop, framework conditions for a high-quality, sustainable and competitive tourism product were missing. Accommodation businesses, visitor services, guides and guest information services need to improve and raise their quality standards and service quality to become a competitive, attractive and marketable tourism destination.

The DAV Summit Club, one of the leading local specialist tour operators for mountain tourism and CSR-certified, strongly supports the Peaks of the Balkans Trail and joined forces with GIZ to form a development partnership to transform the Peaks of the Balkans region into a high quality, competitive tourism product.

AGEG Tourism for Sustainability Consulting undertake the following measures to improve the quality of products and services:

• Overall technical coordination
• Increased the quality of the mountain accommodation sector (B&Bs, pensions, small hotels, eco-camps, mountain huts) and achieved a high service standard, through ‘Best-practise’ training and study visits for the local business
• Long-term management of the safety, and maintenance of the PoB trails (e.g. signposting, training through DAV experts)
• Improvement of the tourist information service quality standards and the visitor services standards in the target region, through training and education of trekking guides and professionalization of tourist information offices
• Targeted marketing campaigns – market launch of the PoB trail through media (e.g. press conferences, press trips), trade fairs and creation of promotional material (eg. flyers, social media and Project Trailer)
• Development of the “Taste the Peaks of the Balkans” Initiative to promote local products.