On 11-12 June 2019, a partner meeting was held in Jurmala and Riga within the framework of the BRANDTour Interreg Europe project, bringing together not only participants of the project, but also representatives of the local tourism ecosystem to learn good practices and discuss the functioning of small and medium-sized enterprises in the digital age.
On the first day of the meeting, a seminar on the development of products of small and medium-sized enterprises in the digital age was held in Jurmala. As part of the seminar, the director of the digital marketing agency Infinitum Andis Stafeckis told with practical examples about development and advancement of products on the market using digital marketing tools. Meanwhile, the leading expert of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (IDAL) Mārtiņš Enģelis provided an insight into the digital marketing activities carried out by IDAL in the Latvian market, while the Latvian health tourism cluster specialist Anda Aleksandrova showed examples of good practices implemented by the cluster in marketing activities.
At the same time, BRANDTour project partners learned three examples of good practices in Latvia, which the partners would like to take over in their regions. Thus, the cluster support programme implemented by the Ministry of Economics, the Latvian approach to the development of slow tourism in the development of the state tourism brand and the support provided by IDAL to tourism merchants in individual and national stands were recognised as Latvia’s good practices.
In order to study the examples of good practices in Latvia, the project partners went to the Vaivari Rehabilitation Centre, where they familiarised with the services of a member of the Health Tourism Cluster, visited the Central Market as an example of good practice example for the “slow food” movement in Latvia, but in the end visited the tourism operator “Baltic Travel Group”, where they studied the operator’s experience of participation in exhibitions carried out with IDAL’s support.
Further work within the BRANDTour project provides for the development a plan of activities to take over the good practices of other partners in their countries and regions. Latvia has chosen to deeper explore the platform of digital tourism companies administered by the Balearic Islands for statistical production, the example of South Limburg in adapting electronic ticket systems for the sale of events to foreign tourists, and the example of good practices of Crete in promoting cooperation between small businesses.
The BRANDTour project brings together 7 organisations from six different regions of the European Union (Tuscany region (Italy), East Flanders (Belgium), South Limburg (Netherlands), Crete region (Greece), Balearic Islands (Spain) and Latvia), with a view to building up regional capacity to promote the development of tourism policy, promote the supply of different and innovative tourism products and the development of tourism flows to the European Union.
Additional information on the BRANDTour project is published on the project website: https://www.interregeurope.eu/brandtour/