The primary objective of the project is to help the country houses of the Slovenian-Hungarian border region to become socio-economically self-sustainable in order to develop sustainable tourism and thus improve their position in the tourism sector. Furthermore, to strengthen social inclusion and innovation, develop local communities by actively involving socially sensitive groups to serve as a driving force for the country houses as dedicated bastions of rural heritage conservation.
In the preceding project HOUSES, the project partners have created a thematic tourist route (with 9 members), the HOUSES Route, based on the offer of the Slovenian-Hungarian border country houses. During the implementation of the project and its subsequent operation, it became evident that the knowledge (mainly tourism and financial) of the operators, managers, owners and volunteers of the country houses is not always sufficient to welcome tourists, to develop and widely promote the tourist offer at a high level, or to plan the finances to ensure profitable operation. We would like to expand the cooperation to 16 cooperating country houses and exhibition spaces.
The most successful activities of the flagship project were the thematic events organised in the country houses, where the participating country houses organised more and more events of increasing quality, using their own budgets. However, these events mostly reach only the local and surrounding population. Although the project has resulted in a flow of visitors from across the border, it needs to be strengthened and increasing the number of visitors from across the border compared to locals is an important objective of this project.
We aim to build on the results of the previous project and the further development opportunities identified:

• to extend the network of the Path of Country houses with new members from the Slovenian-Hungarian border region, to further broaden the awareness of the tourism product,
• promoting the self-sustainability of the country houses (and the programmes and services they offer), raising awareness of sustainability and responsible management
• improving the knowledge of tourism and hospitality among the human resources of small municipalities
• fostering social innovation and intergenerational relations through the organisation and quality of inclusive community events, attracting visitors and promoting local community participation.

In this project, we would like to develop a methodology and a professional material based on it, which will help the operators of the country houses to improve their knowledge in tourism and finance (main topics: for-profit thinking, financial sustainability, content development, development of unique themes/offers, setting common quality standards, promoting social integration). The project will identify the quality standards, good practices and development paths that the country houses must follow in order to be able to welcome today’s tourists, including through the use of modern digital tools, in a self-sustainable way. The methodology and technical material developed will be presented in practical workshops with the relevant stakeholders in the border region. After the practical workshops, participants will also receive personalised mentoring.
On the other hand, among the project activities, special attention will be paid to joint thematic marketing to increase the number of visitors, to raise interest in the programmes offered by the country houses and to target potential tourists (from across the border and beyond), families, local and regional residents and members of the local community. In order to broaden and integrate the tourist offer, joint programmes and thematic days will be organised at the country houses involved in the project (e.g. country house nights, craft and gastronomic knowledge transfer days, open school experience days, intergenerational learning, integrated open days with socially sensitive groups, etc.). ) In these programmes, events with the same theme will be organised for a given day or period, following the example of the Day of the Country Houses initiative in Hungary, and several country houses from inside and outside the country can join in. The events will be organised by the country houses themselves, with professional support and an extensive marketing campaign through online and offline platforms and modern tools. The Hungarian “Day of the Country Houses” is not known in Slovenia, so a know-how transfer between the two countries will be established through a range of events and calls for proposals. The methodology can be adapted to other regions’ country houses in the future.

Project end date:

30.9.2027