The new European project "BRANDTOUR" (Building Regional Actions for New Developments in Tourism) -in which the Region of Crete is a partner, together with the Region of Tuscany, the Ministry of Finance of Latvia, the Economic Council of East Flanders (Belgium) and the Council of Tourism in South Limburg (The Netherlands)- aims to support tourism growth through policies for the promotion, innovation and diversification of the tourist offer and provide the development of new personalized tourist services.
Through interregional cooperation, we will achieve better means to: reinforce the means of tourist promotion of the less known destinations in partners’ areas, endorse the physical assets, cultural heritage and history through advanced management, utilization of local attractions through better place marketing, Branding Strategy and stakeholders communication channels for the MED region, development of thematic and experience-oriented forms of tourism, strengthening of the local SMEs to tackle seasonality and the challenges of the local market.
Through the Smart Specialization Strategy, the regions of Crete and Tuscany are undertaking actions that increase the competitiveness of local SMEs in the tourism sector by enhancing local entrepreneurship and synergies between businesses, clusters and private and public tourism operators at interregional and European level. The new European project “BRANDTOUR” which will last five years and is funded by Interreg Europe, was recently launched into the BRANDTour Inaugural Workshop which was held in Florence, Italy. Dr. E. Hatziyanni, Director of Environment and Spatial Planning and A. Stefanidou, Executive Director of the Tourism Directorate participated, on behalf of the Region of Crete.
