INTERREG IIIc
SusSET – Sustaining Small Expanding Towns
THEME 1 - “Tourism and a sense of belonging”
Lead Town: Åmål Other Towns: to be confirmed
Scope
How is the theme best defined? |
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The object of the Theme is to learn from each other through good examples how to use our strong sides and how to develop these strong sides in a commercial way. What could we learn, what was good and what should we make on another way. Further more will we put an international aspect on solving problems and developing projects. Are the problems the same irrespective of geographical location?
Furthermore it is important that those who live and work in our towns feel that they participate and are a part of the community that we create and build up together.
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Why is this theme important to Sustaining Small Expanding Towns? |
In order to meet the increased globalization and the growing number of visitors, we as small attractive towns must be better at highlighting the potential of each unique town. Competition from artificial/ created tourist attractions is great but trends are pointing towards a diminished interest in them and more interest in smaller, interesting areas. It is vitally important that we have strategies and tools to meet the increased demands that are the goals of the project.
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What are the consequences of small towns ignoring the theme? |
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One possible theory is that the town will lose out to similar towns nearby and miss the opportunity to build a future;a future that is already here.
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What do we know about the theme already? |
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That we will focus on:
- Valuing culture
- Dig where you stand
- Recognising leadership
- Working flexibly
- Nurturing perticipation
- Building real partnerships and working groups cross borders
- Demonstrating local benefit
- Planning for sustainability
- Pursuing for quality
- International perspective on local problems
- Participation of habitants in developing towns
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How 'wide' and how 'deep' does SusSET need to go with the theme? |
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SusSET, by active participation, will help each town develop an instrument that can help it take advantage of a potential tourist market. The goal is that after the completion of the project each town will have a strategic plan for tourist development in their municipalities. We will accomplish this by meeting and seeing where we stand and what we have to offer. From this starting point we can see each other’s potential and how we can develop. We need to learn from what others have done, not what they should have done differently.
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What discussions might SusSET need to have? |
Discussions on determining a starting point, setting goals and learning from each other’s good examples.
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In light of the above, what aspects might SusSET need to test? |
The smaller projects focussing on tourist development in each town should be followed up and evaluated. There should also be a possibility to visit one or more of the sub-projects in each town in order to see if the theories hold in practice and also to assure that the same mistakes are not repeated – and to get good ideas that might work in different places in Europe under different conditions.
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Tourism and Sense of Belonging
Objective:
The goal for the theme groups is to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to help and support development in tourism. Through development each town can build up a tourist industry that focuses on profit and sustainability and uses the strengths of the towns to develop commercially marketable products.
To reach this goal each town should have two objectives. Objective 1 is to focus on moving smaller projects forward. These projects are different, sometimes very different but objective 2 is to put them in context and to learn from each other and from the projects. In this way we develop instruments that can be applied to the development of small towns in the future.
Proposal of activities (for discussion):
1. Mutual promotion of SusSET towns:
Amal proposes that each town interested in taking part in the theme should draw up a document on how to work for the development of tourism. The towns can list a number of objectives based on their own perspectives.
It would also be helpful if a report is sent in that lists the activities planned for each town and the sub-projects that are being carried out. This will give an overview and help determine if several towns have the same ideas that can be linked. It is important to have a project that is interesting internationally or interesting to carry out in other cooperating European towns.
2. Strategy building activities:
i. Develop documents for the strategies that form the basis for work with tourism and citizen involvement in the municipality –during working hours – November 2005.
ii. Send in a report for the local sub-project to be carried out in the framework of SusSET- during working hours – December 2005
iii. Put together material – during working hours - Lead Town
iv. After visiting other towns give feedback on their strengths and weaknesses – during working hours - May 2006
v. Develop guidelines for tourism promotion on a central municipal level. What do we do? How do we do it? Why? – during working hours - September 2006
vi. Create a document to act as a tool for how to develop tourism in small towns in a sustainable and profitable way– during working hours + 1000 Euros – May 2007.
vii. More suggestions....
All the costs in € are costs that town of AMAL is planning to spend on this investigative area. We think that if you wish to follow our plan of action, you should have approximately the same amounts of €, or try to make it by staff costs.
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