24 October, 2014, YEREVAN Heifer Armenia’s partner from Turkey-Gumushane National Educational Provincial Directorate hosted around 30 representatives of travel agencies and tourism sector service providers from Armenia, Bulgaria and Georgia on 18-22 October 2014 in the framework of the EU funded Promoting Innovative Rural Tourism (PIRT) project. The project is implemented by Heifer Armenia as a lead partner in cooperation with Heifer Georgia, VEDA (Varna Economic Development Agency in Bulgaria) and Gumushane National Educational Provincial Directorate from Turkey.

The regional group of tourism sector service providers and representatives of travel agencies were in Turkey on exchange visit to discover the flavor of Turkish rural tourism and learn from the best practice of Turkish partners on how to promote rural tourism and productively run their businesses serving the tourism sector in their home countries. This exchange visit in addition to the exchange visits to Armenia, Bulgaria and Georgia organized within the project provided one more opportunity to the participants to cooperate with the partners engaged in the regional network of tourism service providers from 4 countries. 

“The tour was very impressive and very productive too”, said Anahit Ghazanchyan, Heifer Armenia Country Director. “We visited such attractions of Turkey as Gumushane Karaca cave, Bayburt Baksi Museum, Aydintepe underground city, Trabzon Uzungol, Sumela Monastery, Ayasofya church, Rize ayder plateau, tea, nut and sucuk factories and Bed and Breakfast businesses etc. all along or close to the Black Sea coast”, noted Ms. Ghazanchyan. Ms. Ghazanchyan added that the exchange visits to Armenia, Georgia and Turkey provided wonderful opportunity to travel agencies and service providers from the region to share their practice, gain from each other and identify how they can work together to attract tourists for travelling to the Black Sea Basin region within one single package (Single cross border visitor’s package) developed within the project.

Ms. Medea Tsitskishvili, PIRT Project Coordinator from Georgia stressed the importance of the visit in terms of strengthening the network and cooperation between the service providers from partner countries for future joint initiatives. “The service providers and travel agents from Georgia, Armenia, Bulgaria and Turkey had one more chance to meet, network and discuss opportunities of future cooperation to foster rural tourism in the region”, said Ms. Tsitskishvili.

 

The PIRT project is directed at supporting regional cooperation and cross border partnerships for economic and social development in four Black Sea Basin countries (Armenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia) based on combined resources through creation of rural tourism networks in order to promote joint tourism development initiatives and traditional products.

 

In the framework of the project a network of trained and capable local service providers in rural tourism and travel agencies will be established which will develop and sell a unique touristic product Single Cross-border Visitor package (SCBV package). The SCBV package will increase the inter-flows of visitors on the regional level and contribute to unprecedented cooperation between national authorities in the region and intra-country, aimed ultimately to sustaining the cross-border impacts of rural tourism.

PIRT is co-financed by the European Union in the amount of 472,923.43 EURO through the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument. The project began in November 2013 and its duration is 18 months. 

 

  -   Press release