HOUSES

Protection and touristic use of cultural, natural and built heritage are common problems in the programme area. Inbound tourists commonly spend their time only on one side of the border. Utilization, as the essential key in the protection of natural and cultural heritage is lacking, e.g. targeted sales and marketing. Therefore, circumstances in rural areas are still getting worse. Our planned activities and intense direct marketing will help to reduce the problems mentioned before. The main objective of project HOUSES is to integrate our cultural and built heritage – especially traditional houses – into the tourism offer, which contributes to the protection of these sites. A new methodology is being elaborated in order to help the several developed traditional houses to reach the same quality on both sides of the border, as well as to increase the quality of the related tourism offers to meet the today’s expectations. The improved offer then will be organized into a cross-border tourism package, called “The Route of Traditional Houses”. The participating houses will be selected in an open call. The roots of the traditional houses in the programme area are originated from the same culture, however the traditions and habits of local villagers had a great influence on how they look today. “The Route of Traditional Houses” will highlight the unique features on the two sides of the border, broadening the knowledge of visitors and strengthening the uniqueness of the thematic route. As a unique innovation, hotels will be selected in open call to sell the developed offer combined with their own services. By the reservation of these packages the number of overnights and visitors will increase due to the INTERREG V-A Slovenia – Hungary, as well as direct measurement becomes available. To sum up, the main outputs of the project are “The Route of Traditional Houses” as a new touristic product, and increasing the number of visits to natural and cultural heritage by 2000 persons.