Case study - Bukovina Tourism Association

INTRODUCTION

Bucovina Tourism Association (hereafter: BTA or Association) was established in the end of 2001 at the initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Suceava County, the Romanian Ministry of Tourism, all the travel agencies of Bucovina and a German project –called IBD/GTZ, which was the program of the German government for economical promotion and labor force development. BTA is a non-governmental and a not-for-profit organization. At first, after the establishment of the association, there were no clear goals to be achieved; nevertheless, as the years passed, the aims began to be clearer and new visions and plans for future activities were developed. The association will celebrate in 2012 10 years of activity and, therefore, they are planning to held celebration.

First activities mainly consisted in printing and marketing tourist leaflets and information materials, initially only in Romanian language. After a couple of years association started to reach international markets by providing brochures also in other languages and by participating in foreign international fairs. Nowadays the association has many aims but developing touristic strategies and promoting Bucovina as a tourist destination are still the most important tasks. Furthermore, the.association developed and updates the database of the touristic sites of Bucovina, tries to foster programs aimed at increasing accessibility in Bucovina, helds workshops, seminars, conferences etc. Moreover, the association aims at linking and joining together the stakeholders of tourism in Bucovina area and establishing networks among hotels, travel agencies, craftsmen, etc. Finally, the Association encourages the cooperation between public and private sectors, also not forgetting to provide training courses for the tourism personnel and for the members of the association.

The association has several members which consist of hotels, pensions, guest houses, camping sites, restaurants, travel agencies, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, craftsmen and typographies. Most of the members are hotels because of the financial opportunity offered by the association (better “integrated” advertisement) and hotels are also those who usually want to improve the quality of their services. BTP provides its members tourist and information material concerning Bucovina area. Other advantages that members receive are: “integrated” representation and promotion during tourism fairs and exhibitions, regular briefings and advices on national and international tourism fairs and tourism events and the possibility to ask for help by the experts from IBD/GTZ in promoting tourist products and preparing promotional materials, e.g. how to appear and present themselves on the webpage of the association.

Partnerships are very important opportunities for the association and the most helpful partner is maybe the Stefan cel Mare University because the association doesn’t have much money to hire employees, while students can work as volunteers or as part-timers in return of learning by experience in “real life-projects”. Other partnerships are established with the Chamber of Commerce, various Majors, Suceava Brewery, volunteers and also with neighbouring Moldova and Ukraine.

Association has few fundings, mainly from the European Social Fund, Leonardo da Vinci Programme, that is part of the European Commission’s Life Long Learning Programme and whose funds target at practical projects in the field of vocational education and training. Moreover, the Association receives money by offering services in economic sector (on demand) and, of course, fees are paid by the members, according to the accommodation capacity of each member: member fee ranges from 120€ to 250€ per year. Anyway, the money that the association receives usually come from successful projects.

1. THE WORKING GROUP: AIMS, PHASES AND METHODOLOGY

The aim of our working group, as a part of the INNO NATOUR project, is to improve and innovate the BTA organization and to give them some advices. Our group consists of students from the following countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, Slovakia.

In order to accomplish our task, we followed some steps and we used different tools and methods. At the begining we receive some basic information about the Association by Otilia Bordeainu, from the Stefan cel Mare University. Then, we had a meeting with Lăcrămioara Beilic –the coordinator of BTA, in the Chamber of Commerce, where the Association is based. There we found out and discussed about the current situation of the organisation and how it used to be in the past. We also received information about the company, ongoing and planned acivities, main goals, projects and expectations. In order to help them, we were supposed to suggest some innovations.

During the process of our group work, we were attending different lectures dedicated to management, innovations and tourism services, taken by specialists in this field of interest, coming from different countries.