Contact person(s): Anita Bálint - balint.anita@vasmegye.hu

Program website:

The project aimed to integrate the rural, small village areas of the Slovenian-Hungarian border region into the tourism offer by developing specific elements of a complex visitor guide management system, promoting the area as an attractive tourist destination and ensuring the physical accessibility of the border region.

As a starting activity, the project partners carried out a survey on the habits of tourists arriving in the area and the range of services offered by the area's service providers. After summarising, they started to build a complex guide management system based on the development of a visitor management concept.

VVÖH created a database about the region's attractions and installed on the project website: http://guide2visit.eu/. This has been the basis for the walking and cycling tours connecting the sights and the cross-border tour packages created by the project partners. VVÖH has organised these into a sophisticated information booklet with map annexes that is easy for tourists to read. Additional tourist documents have been produced, such as information cards presenting less-known but worthwhile cultural, architectural and natural attractions. The cards have been placed in three tourist information centres in our region. The cards are constantly being reprinted because they are very popular among the tourists.

We have prepared the area to welcome sustainable, green tourism through capacity-building for service providers and guide training for residents.

We have equipped our 12 hiking trails with 500 direction signs and 12 information boards to make it easier to explore the beautiful natural environment of the Hungarian-Slovenian border region. This was facilitated by a major project investment: the establishment of a cycling link between Orfalu and Bűdfalva (Budinci).

In order to present this region as a unified, common tourist destination, the project partners have carried out significant promotional activities. Articles promoting the destination have been published in tourism magazines, and the region's attractions and natural values have been presented at fairs and marketing campaigns.

The overall objective of the project, which was constantly emphasized by the project partners throughout the project implementation, is to position the region as an attractive tourist destination. In addition promoting the specific architectural, folk traditions and natural values of the individual landscape units that make up the common destination, the aim is to support the development of the scattered, smaller attractions into a single attraction, a complex product, which will be made really effective by the operation of a visitor guide management system consisting of several elements.

Project partnership:

• Vas County Government Office -HU (lead partner)
• Zala County Government - HU
• Scientific Research Centre Bistra Ptuj - SI
• Institute for Culture, Tourism and Sport Murska Sobota - SI
• Institute for Tourism and Development Lendava - SI
• National Infrastructure Developing Private Company Limited - HU

*

Látogatóirányítási_koncepció_20180131