- Generating ideas and product design
- Identification of best practices and assessment of market potential
- Business planning and feasibility studies
- Identifying sources of funding
- Production and implementation
- Local partnership building
- Aftercare – maintenance, support and troubleshooting
Essentially, the travel and tourism industry is an integral market developed to meet the specific consumers’ needs in various travel related products, with a tourism product being a set of certain services in terms of access to a particular holiday destination and returning home, as well as services provided to a tourist during his stay. The range of such products and services, their quality and potential for producing desired memories directly influence the length of tourists’ stay at a holiday destination as well as the feelings, memories and impressions they will take home and share with others.
In the contemporary tourism industry, we may find an ever increasing use of the term ‘experience’ to define and describe certain tourism products or services, a word that fully demonstrates the peculiarities of consumption in travel and tourism sector. A tourist starts his journey, first of all, seeking for new cognitive and emotional experiences – local knowledge and interaction with local people, culture and history, esthetic, taste sensations, etc. In this respect, it is reasonable to define a tourism product generally as a combined experience perceived by a tourist throughout his journey – from the moment of leaving his home and up to the moment of coming back.
Our activity in terms of creating new products and services is based on a sustainability approach, providing balance between economic growth and environment, and focuses on satisfying various social and economic needs of local communities by making the past (local cultural, historic and natural resources) steward the future. We believe that every new experience (herewith we use the world to denote tourism products, facilities, attractions and services) broadens the range of unique tourist offer in the region, and we are working to satisfy the continuing need of a modern day traveler in learning, exploring and local participation.
By implementing our ideas in close cooperation with local communities, we aim at contributing to local development, the communities’ economic growth and wellbeing, employment and self-fulfillment of local people, in particular women and youth, local heritage preservation, and provide good stewardship and protection of heritage values insuring continuation into the future.
When developing new tourism products, we usually undertake all necessary steps starting from the generation of an idea and ending up with a turnkey product, ensuring the due implementation of the concept, economic accountability, feasibility, sustainability and holistic approach. Most of our products are regarded as a key or anchor objects for local development, and in some cases they tend to change the nature of local economy from a resource-consuming to a dynamically developing one, leading to the desired growth and transformations.
An area based partnership is usually designed to bring together all relevant actors (including local tourism operators, communities, authorities, scientific and environmental institutions, professional associations) within a region and contribute to a product development on an equal basis, working together through a whole process, and securing the future operations and sustainability.
The intermediate tourism product development stages and components usually incorporate the development of the project planning and design documentation, case studies, technical, economical and market research, business planning, identification and allocation of funding, implementation, launch, marketing and promotion, maintenance etc.
Our outstanding achievements are the Eco-tourist Visitor Centre (Yaremche, Carpathian National Nature Park), Vyhoda Narrow Gauge Railway Heritage Centre (Vyhoda, Dolyna District), Carpathian Culinary Heritage Trail (covering mountain regions of Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary), Discover the Pearls of Eastern Europe Tour (a cultural heritage tour through the most beautiful cities of Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland), self-guided audio excursions in cities of Ivano-Frankivsk and Kolomyia, the Rudiak Bog in the Carpathian National Nature Park, and many others.
All these products / facilities attract numerous visitors to the target localities and secure their expenditures, benefiting many tourism stakeholders – local tourism operators, owners of B&Bs, accommodation and catering facilities, tourist guides, cultural institutions, nature parks and many other entities. These products generate additional revenues for the local economy, maintaining hundreds of jobs, assist with environment preservation and conservation, and add value to the local cultural heritage. Eventually, the mention products improved the image of local communities and became the object of pride for the local population.
Alongside with the famous tourist localities, we also focus our activity on the development of remote and depressed areas with the prevailing conventional methods of local economy, authentic culture and traditions, unspoiled natural landscapes and environment, but experiencing population decrease tendencies due to young people’s migration to big cities and abroad. We see great potential for tourism development in these communities as the traditional household, handicrafts, authentic history, people, cultural and natural environment are the most wanted things urban post-industrial tourists seek while on holidays.
We are open for cooperation with the caring communities across the Carpathian region and with pleasure will share our expertise, resources and provide customized solutions and tailormade assistance with implementation of new tourist projects in their localities.