BALTIC TOURISM ACADEMY

During the spring of 2001 the Commission on Tourism has been working with the Baltic Tourism Academy, a part of a bigger EU project, and its seminar series around the Baltic Sea. The seminars focused on how to work with events in different aspects. Totally around 300 persons visited one or more seminars from January to June this year.

The Baltic Tourism Academy travelled around the Baltic Sea as follows: 1) January 23-24, Kalmar/marketing, 2) January 25, Karlskrona/the idea behind, 3) February 27, Tallinn/organising & financing, 4) March 29, Gdynia/organisation, 5) April 26, Vilnius/advertising, 6) May 8, Rostock/sponsoring and finally 7) May 10, Nykøbing F./measuring effects. If you want to know more about the Academy and different events please visit: www.balticevents.com.

Information about the Baltic Tourism Academy and its seminars has been distributed via the UBC network and this showed to have great impact on participation in the seminars. The Commission on Tourism offered a refund of 100 EURO for participants from Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Handbook

As one result of the seminars a handbook on CD-ROM has been produced. The CD with the title "EVENTS - instruments for marketing tourism destinations" is written as a book, but printed in a digital version. It is very easy to use and parts or the whole book may be downloaded from the CD for a paper version (170 pages). The handbook aims at being a best-practice and checklist book and not an encyclopaedia. For people working in tourism, and especially with events, and also students, this might be interesting and a good help in many aspects. The CD contains many contact persons, lecturers and further literature lists. For more information, please contact the Commission on Tourism.

Evaluation

The seminar series has been evaluated in detail to get more information on the needs of training in tourism in the Baltic Sea region. The information gathered will result in a new improved Baltic Tourism Academy. Look out for more information in the UBC network and the Baltic City Bulletin.

The Commission for the moment

The Commission keeps the focus on training in tourism and encourages more involvement from the eastern side of the UBC network. For the moment the Commission is planning a project where the Commission will function oranisationally as an umbrella. The project called "The New Role of Cities and regions in Sustainable Development - Spatial planning cultural tourism policy interpretation and communication" was initiated by Mr Arne Ellefors, CTI, Norrköping. This will be a BSR INTERREG IIIB project if approved. For more details about the project please visit the website: www.spatial.baltic.net/interregiii/project_list.xls and click the project "Spatial planning cultural tourism". Here you may find many other interesting projects aswell.

Finally the Commission on Tourism welcomes you all to the General Conference in Rostock, where a special session for the Commission will be held.