20 Dec Capacity building
The capacity building meetings took place in each DiscOver55 region during October 2016, organised by local partners involving local SMEs and tourism stakeholders: about 10/15 people took part in these meetings in each territory.
Objectives of these meetings were to involve stakeholders met during the evaluation missions to return them results and recommendations; inform them about tourist package testing (pilot) and, in case of their direct involvement, points of improvement to be taken into consideration for their services/offer, and finally to collect answers to questionnaires.
During these events the organizers have shared with the guests a report on the evaluation missions held in their own country, a presentation of the results so far and the evaluation made by the scientific partner Siti. They also offered a short presentation of the upcoming activities: pilot test in each area, market analysis and handbook preparation, followed by a discussion.
After the meeting a questionnaire was filled out by each participant, from which it appeared that most of them are satisfied with the cooperation with their local partner and are sufficiently informed before and during the assessment mission. They think it’s important to create tourist services tailored for senior 55+ in the low/medium season, they want to be involved in the sector of senior tourism, and they would like to have a stronger focus on this target group in the future. It is also quite interesting for them to promote their service/offer in other languages like Chinese and Russian.
Some of the participant left also comments and suggestions: they find interesting to underline the aspects related to wellbeing (thermal baths, excursions, oil, activities as “bones for life”, country side atmosphere, yoga and meditation, quality of food) and to create tourist packages with all the SME network members, which include accompanying guide who speaks the same language of the group and minibuses to accompany senior tourists during the visits.