Baltic Welcome Center

The problems of the tourism sector in the Baltic Sea Region are a high competition within the sector, competence disparities between tourism actors of different regions and countries as well as different service quality levels. In addition the local information provided does not fully meet the tourists’ demand, as they look upon the Baltic Sea Region as one destination. Partners from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Russia are cooperating since January 2002 in this Interreg IIIB project with the main objective to develop a service quality guideline for tourist information and visitor centres in the Baltic Sea Region, which shall be used for self-controlling in order to improve the service quality and establish multifunctional visitor centres as important tourism assets to serve customers and market tourism destinations. The project Baltic Welcome Centre is based on the need to create a holistic tourism information supply, involving different destinations and sectors at regional and international level. The main objective was to strengthen the tourism sector in the Baltic Sea Region and the image of tourism destinations by an increasing quality of visitor centres and its service supply. A common vision for the future visitor centre, meeting the demand of modern tourists and inhabitants, has been developed as a tool for guaranteeing a high service quality and successful marketing. This would help to overcome the disparities and increase the competence of local tourist guides, as training and transfer of know-how has been carried out in the project too. Furthermore integrating the relevant sectors in the planning process creates co-operation between different sectors in spatial and tourism planning. All partners have undertaken plannings by investigating in concrete feasibility studies, business plannings, location & architectural plans, city and spatial plans in order to create a base for establishing modern tourist information and visitor centres and link it to the city’s and region’s attractions and tourism zones. As a following step investments could be realised in the course of the project, improving the tourism infrastructure and especially the facilities of visitor centres to adapt the offers to customer’s needs. Marketing strategies and promotion activities have been important issues of know-how-exchange and implementation, while a special focus was given to Online Marketing, booking systems and new IT solutions. The result is the improvement of online marketing strategies, the establishment of virtual visitor centres and the international connection of these sites at a common interface platform on Internet.