Promoting Wine Tours Destinations through Contemporary Media Platforms Erasmus Project

Project Title

Promoting Wine Tours Destinations through Contemporary Media Platforms

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The result of this project is developed and piloted web- and mobile-based platform for promoting wine tourism, wine tourism destinations, utilizing contemporary functionality as location sharing, VR videos, social sharing, personalization, etc. That platform expands the use of ICT in promoting the product stage and the business-to-customer relationship process. The main outcome is a converged platform divided into different sectors and categories of users – enterprises and tourists. The platform offers a complete set of services and tools supporting the blended processes of developing wine tourism products, advertising them, booking resources, sharing and grading tourist’s experience, connecting customers and businesses, offering additional services, upcoming new products, team development, and e-learning.

The project is a transnational initiative, implemented in Bulgaria, Italy, and Greece by organizations with significant experience in creating alternative types of tourism products and services, methodology development and innovative methods research and product promotion. The project outputs are not nationally limited and their application changes the whole concept of the promotion process, stimulating trans-partner cooperation and networking. The partner organizations systematized the world’s best contemporary practices in product promotion for alternative types of tourism and jointly developed new advertising and training tools, and approbate new and modern ways of contact between organizations and their customers, based on ICT. The blended or hybrid approach combines online (web and mobile-based) platform that allows flexibility and self-regulation of promotion.

The direct target group of this project are enterprises from Bulgaria, Italy, and Greece, specialized in offering wine tourism products and researching new methods of expanding the attractiveness of similar services and thus their regions as tourist destinations. Eight workshops were carried out in Bulgaria (3), Italy (2), and Greece (3). The project piloting groups in each country were also involved in dissemination activities. 75 persons were planned to take part in the piloting stage, 25 in each country. Actually the piloting team consisted of 102 persons. Outreach campaign geared towards direct beneficiaries and aiming to select 75 managers from specialized tourism enterprises in each country to take part in dissemination workshops. More than 275 were counted. The final outcomes were disseminated through partner networks on a national and regional level and are available for all partners from Bulgaria, Italy, and Greece. The final project outcomes are presented in four EU languages – Bulgarian, English, Italian and Greek. This not only enlarges the scope of each partner’s work but it increases the number of potential users. Extended target groups of this project are all wine tour enterprises from the above-mentioned countries as indirect beneficiaries and direct participants into the researching process, vocational training networks for tourism professions, other educational institutions, public educational structures, and educational inspectorates.

Archived objectives:
– On an individual level: to equip wine tour businesses with innovative skills and tools for promoting the destinations; to create a network of partners from different destinations and boost the professional development and skills of their employees.
– On partner level: to integrate contemporary media resources into the business process and to increase the quality of the offered final product;
– On system level: to upgrade the business and specific operational knowledge of the employed in the sector in order to develop the specialized tourism types, one of which is wine tourism.

All partners have declared mutual interest in the maintenance and sustainability of the media content and the platform. All produced intellectual outputs are available and in use after the lifetime of the project. The generated media and additional information are integrated into the platform and available in four European languages. These products could be tailored to the needs of other enterprises which are not Hospitality oriented and even transferred in new areas. Thus new partnerships could be established and developed.

The availability of the project outputs and results is a basic presumption of the so established partnership. The final product, the platform itself, will be available for every interested person, who is familiar with the four project languages. The participating organizations are interested in continuing the platform maintenance and support because this tool will broaden the scope of their work among new instructors. However, the main responsibility for the platform overall maintenance will be on Bilta EAD.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 163929,87 Eur

Project Coordinator

BILTA EAD & Country: BG

Project Partners

• Drama Hotel Association
• Euroform RFS