Innovation in Rural Tourism

The InRuTou project aims at developing and testing a set of tools and innovative models for facilitating the development of sustainable tourism in rural areas, specifically in mountainous regions, by fostering a community consultation process, and for training selected opinion leaders to act as multipliers in enhancing community tourism planning via training existing and new local tourism operators, with various degrees of experience, professional and educational background.

The addressed challenges

  • Rural mountain communities – excluded from the development processes.
  • Lack of knowledge about valorisation, entrepreneurship, management, promotion of tourism resources, New Media use.
  • Lack of specified vocational educational training (VET) opportunities.

Aims

The project aims at developing and testing a set of tools and innovative models for facilitating the development of sustainable tourism in rural areas, specifically in mountainous regions, by fostering a community consultation process, and for training selected opinion leaders to act as multipliers in enhancing community tourism planning via training existing and new local tourism operators, with various degrees of experience, professional and educational background.

The ICT approach, including e-learning (blended learning strategy), online sharing platform and a desktop and mobile application, as well as the training method will also facilitate integration of knowledge and experience exchange among the given stakeholders on the community level, enabling creation of joint innovative solutions, such as the new local provider networks, formation of new connections between local communities and the international tourism market and development of the rural tourist offers. 

Planned Activities

  • Creating a set of digital tools and learning contents, delivered in open educational resources (OER) and open software licences (Open Source), for European Rural Tourism Stakeholders (Tourism Innovators)
  • Valorising the local tourism resources in Waldviertel in AT, Carpathians in PL, RO, UA and Apennines in IT through enabling and supporting the local population in using created technological tools for local heritage promotion and local tourism product development
  • Promoting a comprehensive view of RT attractions in the selected locations for visitors via online and mobile promotional e-tools.
  • Exploiting and capitalizing tourism as a development economic opportunity, leveraging on New Media for the creation, administration and promotion of rural tourism initiatives.
  • Empowering residents of rural areas of Romania, Poland, Italy, Ukraine and Austria, by facilitating their participation, information and awareness, to take part in the development process and improvement of their livelihoods, through the processes below.
    • Increasing awareness about the international, regional, national and local information resources and tourism – related processes and of ways to engage in them.
    • Improving knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for the sustainable development of rural mountain communities.
    • Enhancing access to electronic mechanisms of planning, communication and training, with an emphasis on the networking component.
    • Fostering community consultation processes, networking and destination governance through the formation of partnerships on local and perhaps regional and national levels, serving rural sustainable development. Tourism stakeholders share the innovative rural tourism initiatives via online communication tools.
  • Training a number of rural innovators, with the help of local opinion leaders, selected by the community consultation to act as multipliers.
  • Supporting participating communities in creation of the pilot rural tourism products, using the developed technological tools.
  • Transfering the innovative methodology and tools to wider areas of the EU and the Neighborhood.

For More Information

For more information, visit the InRuTou project website: http://inrutou.eu/