The NOTTE Proposal aims at complying with several objectives the Commission set up during the last years and specifically from the Calypso Reports on along the guidelines of Tourism:
- as one of the most relevant resources in Europe,
- as low season and low cost tourism representing a tool to ensure a constant revenues and activities flow in a sector generally intended to be overloaded during the good seasons and off-season sleeping
- as seniors’ target group representing today a relevant asset economically able and positively disposed to travel.
Countries involved in this project belong partly to Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Malta, Greece). Southern Europe enjoys a prolonged summer that can be appreciated by Northern-Eastern Europe citizens. On the other side citizens from Southern Europe are less fostered to travel out of their territorial boundaries because more the travel is long and more it’s expected to be expensive (and usually they fear the continental climate especially in winter).Moreover, we included in our project Bulgaria, a younger MS with completely different social, geographic and economic features, to be sure that we represent a larger EU target.
In our project we’ll start from a Status quo situation in each of the involved Partner Countries to register the rate of real and of desired travelling of our target group. After the pilot run, the inclination to travel will be registered again in order to verify the project effects.
We aim, with this project, to developing a tourism product concept applied to 5 Member States senior travellers for a total of approximately 40 persons.
We will offer a destination to each Country group of seniors, choosing a destination for the seniors group coming from the project Younger partner countries, among the countries of the seniors groups participating from the Older Partner Countries and viceversa.
Complying with the Call requirements of the target group (seniors aged 55-80) and of the low-medium season, the tourism product concept will be developed by the Project team in terms of transportation, food, accommodation, guided tours and related thematic activities.
In order to cover the larger preferences and to allow to be specific in each Country destination, the project team will design appropriate thematic issues (e.g. Wine tours, Food, Arts, Wellness etc. ) taking into account that some activities could be carried out indoor due to the low-medium season.
The pilot should run mainly between the months of October-November, generally considered “low seasons” due to the climatic change (for the destinations where the main attraction is the seaside or the outdoor activities) and to the substantial absence of international festivity.
However, as during these seasons a 30%-35% lower price is expected to be applied, it will be up to the project team to find the best combination of cost savings and of benefits offered by the providers, in order to satisfy the business case model delivered by the charged Partners
