Development of agro-tourism is increasing in the world and Europe, and the reason for that is growth in the number of tourists who want to visit a specific region in the local community, get to know the history of the region, culture and heritage, and to feel the way of life of people from that area. Guided by this fact, Tourist Board of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton created and fully financed the new project “Agro-tourism in Herzegovina.”
– Project aims to offer, for this tourist season, a new product; better to say, to revive Herzegovinian village, to provide additional revenue to people who live and work in the countryside. On the other hand, it will offer Herzegovinian villages with beautiful nature and rich gastronomic offer tourists, and that way it will extend the stay of tourists in our area – said Semir Temim, deputy director of the Tourist Board of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton.
Within the project, Tourist Board of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton has made analysis of the situation on the ground and created a database of all households that wish to engage in this type of tourism, and 14 households joined the project. Training classes were held, where top experts trained people on the techniques that are very essential for agro-tourism.
– We went to a study visit to Istria, where we took all the participants to see on the spot how it works, because Istria is an example of good planning and work when it comes to agro-tourism. Currently we are doing marketing part, and the final stage will be to set up tourist signs, in order to characterize potential locations of agro-tourism in this canton – said Temim.
In a series of large number of activities that Tourist Board of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton carried out in preparations for the upcoming season, one of the primary is that information about the tourist offer are made more accessible to foreign and domestic tourists. So far, the tourist offer via mobile devices has been presented, all with the aim of promoting tourism of Herzegovina. Tourist Board is working on a project of mobile travel applications that will be tourist guides for destinations in Herzegovina for mobile devices, without having to connect to the Internet. The idea is that tourists can find, on the interactive map, accommodation, restaurants, attractions, services that are closest to their current location, in Mostar, Neum, Capljina …
Mobile application that represents a travel guide for Mostar, which base contains more than 300 facilities that may be of interest to tourists, is created. All objects are categorized in order to make it easier to be found, short and relevant information about facilities are available, and navigation on the map will take tourists to each of them. Having in mind the dynamic development of tourism, the emergence of new tourist companies and products, applications will constantly be updated and upgraded, and subjects that were not included in the first version of the application will be able to apply for inclusion in the next version.
Tourist Board also invites all interested parties who wish to put themselves in an electronic tourist guide to apply via on the page www.hercegovina.ba
Moreover, within preparations for the upcoming tourist season Tourist Board of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton is the only tourist community of Bosnia and Herzegovina which independently performed at international fairs all over Europe: Ljubljana, Belgrade, Budva, Prague, Rimini, Budapest, Bratislava, Berlin, Vienna, Munich …
– Visitors to the fairs have expressed great interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina and our canton, and those are world fairs visited by more than 100,000 people – said Temim.
Within preparations for the upcoming season Tourist Board completely renewed signalization in the Canton, in Mostar they renewed tourist urban signalization and signalization for pedestrians. A large number of promotional materials is made, and that will be distributed through info centers which have started their activities on 1st of May.
