EU tourism developing project holds workshops in Azerbaijan
By Nigar Orujova
Regional tourism planning workshops were held in Ismayilli and Lenkeran regions of Azerbaijan on September 10 and 12 in the frame of European Union-funded twinning project on strengthening tourism in the country.
The EU assists Azerbaijan in improving the legal framework for tourism development since April 2013, through the twinning project. The project's twinning partners are Austria and Lithuania.
The ultimate goal of the four-component project is to increase the role of the tourism sector in the process of the diversification of Azerbaijan's economy.
The workshops was organized with support of the Culture and Tourism Ministry under supervision of the twinning team, which included MS Project Leader Florian Sengstschmid, RTA Daiva Kirkilaite-Chetcuti, and the project's Component 1 Leader Ferdinand Posnik, as well as a representative of DoT.
Workshop participant's included representatives of regional departments of the ministry, local administration and municipalities, tourism information centers, museums and national reserves, hotels and mass media.
The workshop aimed to familiarize the stakeholders with core principles of Tourism Destination Management, share Austrian experience in the field, as well as to build a dialog with participants targeted at developing ideas towards their particular destination management.
Florian Sengstschmid and Ferdinand Posnik delivered a presentation which covered the tourism destination marketing, product development, value-chain approach, life-cycle of tourism destination, destination branding and other related issues.
A particular stress was made on similarity of focal tools, which can be used to turn a geographically and historically exuberant region into an attractive tourism destination regardless of location of the destination.
Workshops participants shared their views on developing the unique character of their destinations.
Moreover, they spoke about the strengths and the weaknesses of their destinations, stressing the availability of natural resources, geographic location, and noting such problems as the low quality level of services, need for qualified professionals as well as general managing skills, proficient presentation of destination and bundling of tourism routes.
The participants also mentioned some threats for currently attractive and popular destinations pointing out that authentic handmade crafts are getting assimilated with imported ones, thus breaking the uniqueness of the destination components.
Availability of easily accessible homestays preferred by tourists to hotels and providing low services was also raised in discussion as one of the bottlenecks to solve.
The Twinning experts recommended to find a common platform for developing ideas and directing actions with the aim to improve their tourism destination, since making the destination different and unique can be made only by people who are well aware of the region.
Azerbaijan, a South Caucasus republic with unique and picturesque nature, is becoming a favorite destination for tourists around the world, where they may enjoy all the nine climate zones.
The number of foreign nationals who visited Azerbaijan in the first half of 2013 increased by 9.9 percent compared to the same period of 2012 and amounted to 1,196,953.
Most of the foreigners are citizens of Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, and European countries. Domestic tourism is also developing, with such popular destinations as the north-eastern, the northwestern and the southern regions.
The number of hotels in Azerbaijan has been on the rise recently. However, only 260 of the 514 operating hotels have obtained licenses. Currently, 221 licensed travel agencies operate in the country.