REGIONAL INFORMATION:
Sachsen-Anhalt / Germany

Location

The nature park Lower Saale valley is situated in the centre of federal state Saxony-Anhalt. The size of this nature park is 620km² with almost 62.000 inhabitants. This rural nature park is situated between the largest cities and economic centers of the state Saxony-Anhalt, Magdeburg in the north and Halle/Saale in the south. The Lower Saale Valley itself is, apart from the city of Bernburg, out of the superior focus. For the main part it is up to the stakeholders and inhabitants of the region to make sure that Lower Saale Valley will be as vital as today also in the future.

Background information

Since 1990 the region along the Saale river between Halle and Bernburg lost around 25 percent of inhabitans. Especially young woman keep moving into larger cities as Halle or Magdeburg or directly leave the region . The jobs beyond agriculure are often more promising elsewhere. The founding of local action group within LEADER initiative is one of several tools to support sustainable development within the region in future. According to an integrated development strategy innovative actions are to be developed and implemented.

Objectives

The integrative development strategy includes all relevant branches (nature conservation, agriculture, economy, culture and social issues). The guidelines are following:

1. Site-oriented conservation and development of the rural economy,
agriculture and landscaping in harmony with the natural environment.
The LAG supports explicitly education, research and regional
networking.
2. Nature, landscape and cultural heritage as a basis for the
strengthening of regional identity, the development of an attractive
network of local recreation and tourism and regional marketing.

Main Activities

• 2006/07: panels of experts, workgroups, public workshops to develop integrated development strategy
• 2007: application and as local action group for LEADER
• 2008: confirmation
• since 2009: project implementation, support in project development, regular meetings of general assembly and steering group as well as information meetings

Results

Since the start of implementation in 2009 following projects connected to cultural heritage, local identity, marketing of regional products and tourism have been finished:

• Development scenarios for 5 potential compensation areas
• Cadastral land registers of 29 project approaches
• 25 educated cultural landscape guides
• Open data base of cultural landscape elements
• Analysis of historical maps
• Sustainable platform for regional dialogue

To change this CrossCulTour established collaboration with overseas markets, specifically Pacific-Asian markets through the members of PATA (Pacific Asiatic Travel Association). The aim of this activity was to address agencies and tour Operators acting in the Chinese and US markets with targeted offers and promotional material in order to establish specific partnerships with the Central European travel industry.

Workshop with regional suppliers

In the project partner`s regions, regional suppliers of accommodation, restaurants, museums, sites, food producers etc. – were contacted and interviewed about their own experiences with both markets and also for their ideas and wishes within a set of workshop sessions.

The workshops defined tourism products to be targeted at these American and Chinese tourists, especially. The project CrossCulTour submitted the concept of this activity to the “China Outbound Tourism Research Institute” which awards promising activities related to the Chinese tourism market annually. Indeed, in April 2011, the Chinese Tourists Welcoming Award awarded a bronze medal in the category of “Product Innovation” to CrossCulTour’s concept to attract Chinese tourists.

Social Media Campaign 

CrossCulTour started an initiative to raise the awareness of cultural heritage among Chinese residents in Central Europe by launching an online photo contest on www.arco.at/transromanica, where Chinese people living in Central Europe could upload their pictures of European cultural sites. The online vote picked 25 winners, who were awarded with eventful day-trips to further heritage site in the CrossCulTour partner regions. The photos and the accompanying web 2.0-campaign fostered the further promotion of European tourist destinations in China.

Addressing Businesses

Considering the results from the interviews, workshops and further established contacts, sales manuals for both markets were developed. This promotional material for outbound tour operators in USA and China not only contained existing products from the partner regions but also supplementary suggestions for connecting the CrossCulTour regions as a tourist route. At the same time, CrossCulTour improved regional accessibility by implementing common and recognisable multi-lingual signposting at monuments and sites and by producing audio guides for cultural sites for international visitors.

Finally, a sales tour to both markets – Educational Travel Conference in Orlando (USA) and the Chinese International Travel Mart in Kunming (China) – was conducted and promoted the network directly. Tour operators in the targeted markets were addressed personally and received saleable offers from Central European regions and their suppliers.