Within the “Strengthening of WB Identity by Exploiting Cultural Cross-roads to Brand New Tourist Destinations” – SeeCulture project, the second stakeholder seminar took place in Kotor, Montenegro on April 25, 2019. Commencing at 11:00h on that day, over 30 stakeholders gathered at St. Pavle church in Old Town Kotor.
SeeCULTURE aims to support an active cooperation between the cultural and tourism actors of the WB region, create synergies for product development and powerfully utilize the regional cultural diversity as an asset upon which authentic regional branding will be strengthened. Key topics covered during the seminar included storytelling techniques and important skills to have, tour guiding v.s. storytelling, best storytelling practices in tourism, and presentation of the chosen localities in Kotor, Novi Sad and Sarajevo that represent the “Meeting of Cultures” route.
Development of educational material and its distribution during the stakeholder seminar aimed at strengthening storytelling skills pertinent to the “Meeting of Cultures” cultural route, hence the seminar focused on presenting the new potential tourist destinations and its local route of cross-roads of civilizations – thematically connecting the region.
The significance of continuous improvement of innovation skills and exploring the history in urban places were also topics of discussion during the stakeholder seminar. The developed regional branding strategy, as one of the project outputs, was briefly presented to the stakeholders during the seminar. The last seminar session was dedicated to fruitful discussions amongst the attending participants.
The overall objective of the project is to contribute to sustainable cultural tourism by strengthening the Western Balkan cultural identity and touristic networks with an aim to fortify a positive image and better understanding of the region. In line with the overall objective, the project aims to bench-mark the “Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures” landmark as a point of tourist attraction reference to Kotor and Novi Sad.
