This week the fourth stakeholders’ meeting of the BRANDTOUR project addressed further actions and good practices for propelling experiential tourism on Crete. This news is in tune with a newly released publication by the WYSE Travel Confederation, which deals with experiential travel value for Generation Z. Crete island needs a tighter focus on the under-30 travel market and its evolution, so BRANDTOUR and other like programs need support to strive to help vested interests ramp up.
At this most recent BRANDTOUR event, Eleni Hatziyanni, who’s Director of Environment and Spatial Planning of Region of Crete, informed meeting attendees about the program and the objectives of the interregional cooperation for discussing and implementing good practices of experiential tourism in Crete through tourism value chains development.
At the mini-summit, proposals were submitted by the Mayor of Archanes-Asterousia Mr. Emm. Kokosalis, the Deputy Mayor for Tourism of Agios Nikolaos, Mr. Haris Alexakis, the Deputy Mayor for Tourism of Heraklion Mr. G. A. Garancini, the executive of Municipality of Chania, Mrs. S. Polychronakis, by Mr. P. Kalianis for the Chamber of Heraklion, as well as by the representative of Cosa Nostrum, Mr. V. Zisimopoulos and by Rami Masood, the representative of Wine Walker Crete.
Other stakeholders of the tourism industry: Mr. A. Stratakis (Ministry of Tourism – Regional Office of Crete), Mr. V. Papanikolaou (President of Crete Tour Guides), Mrs. E. Bakinda (Development Association of Women of Crete), Mr. P. Ignatiadis (Responsible of PRAXIS Network – Foundation for Research & Technology) and Mr. I. Gryllis (BRANDTour Communication strategy external expert) were in attendance and contributing to the discussion.
On behalf of Region of Crete participated also the members of the BRANDTour project Working Group: R. Papadopoulou, Mrs. Anastasia Stefanidou, S. Yialama, E. Vougioukalaki, V. Madulka and V. Messaritakis.
Our past reports on best practice and the right path for Crete fall in line with local stakeholder efforts, but the 2017 New Horizons Survey supports a needed focus on Generation Z since a 26% jump in young travelers destination activities like one-of-a-kind experiential elements to the basic travel journey. So, experiential tourism for Crete, an island in desperate need of development in the premium travel products space aimed at millennials, seems fundamental for me.
The objective of the BRANDTOUR project is to improve the partners’ capacity to support tourism through the promotion, innovation, and diversification of the offer. The project aims to provide better policy instruments to develop new customized tourism products that can satisfy emerging target groups, and favor inbound flows towards the EU.
It will be interesting to see what initiatives and compromises Crete and EU shareholders will come up with in order to help one of the world’s top destinations go forward smartly. Rest assured, I’ll report on it.
