From the 5^th to the 8^th of October 2014, Alterural has participated to the 5^th European congress of Rural Tourism held in Tyrol/Alpbach village.

This important event takes place every two years and is organized by the EuroGites-European Federation of Rural Tourism. Alterural is a member of this network. This year, after Andalusia, Crimea and Hungaria, it has been held together with its national partner from Austrian Farm Holidays. This was a great opportunity for our association to present the potentials of RT in Bosnia-and-Herzegovina at a European event and exchange with long existing organizations in EU.

In her final speech to this 3-days event, the director of the Regional Tourism Office in Tyrol stressed how definitely Rural Tourism was fitting with the tourists’ growing expectation for more nature, more authenticity, silence, tranquility, healthy food and true personal relations with their hosts…. All the richness that Bosnian countryside can offer to the tourists.

Under the leitmotiv “European Rural Tourism 2020”, the congress was dealing with:

- The state of art and

- The future challenges of this sector by putting stress on the new IT technologies for marketing.

As in previous years, it provided a meeting point and discussion forum for the Rural Tourism entrepreneurs, interested practicians from the private and public sector as well as academics involved in rural tourism. For us, it has been a great chance to exchange with various involved organizations particularly from Bulgaria, Belorussia, Slovenia, France and Germany.

We also collected a lot of precise data about the realities of Rural tourism today: numbers of beds, figures in leading countries, the problem of other members and the new targeted markets: family tourism and the increasing “silver tourism” ( i. senior tourism) which need should be better analyzed.

We participated to a strategic workshop dedicated to the role and future of national rural tourism associations. The sector can be divided in two groups according to their own history, context and sensitiveness by putting a stress: either more on commercialization issues (internet marketing) or on community building among the families dealing with this sector. This last dimension is indeed seen as a strong added value for these organizations in Europe. These associations offer many additional services (counseling, representation, animation, insurance packages etc.) and links among the families that the booking systems will never provide.

The other 4 workshops were dealing with “hot” issues for the sector such as:

-        Impact of internet  booking systems

-        Branding, quality and consumer satisfaction

-        Safety and security- legal and practical framework and how to ease it for micro-services?

-        Rural tourism seen as more than a bed – but what more?

Each Eurogites’ member country was presenting its destination with selected photos for an evening presentation.

The participants were divided in different groups for discussion on the last “hot” topics in our sector.

   

   

The last day, on the 8^th of October, some visits on the field have been organized in order to present a few best RT practices samples in Tirol. Austria is indeed a leader in terms of quality destination for our sector. There is an integrated approach gathering public and private actors to create exceptional offers for RT. Agri-tourism had great impact in Austria for:

-        the stabilization of the demography in the villages by offering economic perspectives,

-        the valorization of rural identities and

-        the sustainability of family farming.

Different themes were possible for these guided visits and we participated to: “Tyrolean holidays farms – hands on cases”. We will use the examples for further presentation of good practices and diversification strategies for our members in BiH.

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