KOSICE, April 29, (WEBNOVINY) – Visegrad Group (V4) countries’ state secretaries of the ministries responsible for tourism have signed a protocol on cooperation in this field in 2011 in Kosice on Friday. As State Secretary of the Slovak Economy Ministry Jan Hudacky informed, signing the protocol is the highlight of Slovakia’s chairing of the Visegrad Group’s marketing group, defining the marketing and promotional activities on supporting sale of tourism products, which Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic will jointly carry out on overseas markets.
“The protocol on 2011 cooperation which our party submits, calls for active cooperation and joint approaches in fulfilling the goals of the European Commission document ‘Europe, the world’s No 1 tourist destination: A new framework for the tourism policy in the EU’,” Hudacky said. He added that their intention is to sell the entire Visegrad region as a whole, as one destination, as this is easier to market than to only offer one country.
The Visegrad countries carry out their joint marketing activities on the most important remote markets: Japan, China, the USA, Russian Federation, India and Brazil under the motto ‘European Quartet – One Melody’. “Individual presentation and drawing attention in these territories is financially very demanding. Coordination of our approaches is based upon the fact that tourists from remote destinations usually visit two or three countries when visiting Europe. Joint advertising brings better effect than individual,” explained the Slovak Tourism Agency (SACR) Director General Peter Belinsky. According to him, the reason why Kosice was chosen for signing the protocol is the effort to utilize the synergy of World Ice Hockey Championship, which started this Friday and of the fact that the city will be the European Capital of Culture in 2013.
Presentations and workshops focused on support of selling bath tourism products in Russian cities of St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Novosibirsk will be among 2011 priorities. Cooperation with US tour operators through an advertising road show in four US cities should continue and a new version of Visegrad countries corporate portal is being prepared. Four Visegrad countries have assigned 430,000 euro for this year’s joint marketing activities.
SITA