Description
Defileul Crisului Repede – Padurea Craiului Natura 2000 site is the largest protected area in Bihor County with a great potential in ecotourism, of which improvement could also help the economic advancement of the local communities. The project offers an alternative to the needs of economic development and conservation of natural and cultural heritage of the area and aims to create conditions for the existence and operation of a representative ecotourism destination network at national and European level. Increasing the quality of ecotourism experiences through building visitors’ center, bike routes and by promoting the site on fares, internet and printed materials will help tourists to learn about natural and cultural heritage of the area, local communities to use the potentials and resources of their surroundings in a sustainable but effective way. The Norwegian tour operator enterprise, Ethical Travel Portal, will help the organization to elaborate an ecotourism concept and an interpretation of the present infrastructure, to evaluate local services and to create a visual identity. It will promote the new eco-touristic services of Bihor County in Norway.
Summary of project results
In order for Padurea Craiului to become a certified ecotourism destination a series of shortcomings needed to be compensated. Therefore, this project aimed to improve a number of management instruments which were underdeveloped. The project meant to create or to improve the management instruments and to facilitate the process for the ecotourism certification steps. Therefore, a series of activities were implemented, such as: - Development of 2 planning documents - the concept of ecotourism development in Padurea Craiului and the interpretation plan for the natural and cultural heritage of the area. - 2 bike rental centres were created, 9 mountain biking routes identified, one local event organised and one underground museum inside a touristic cave developed. - 4 tourism operators were certified in the Eco-Romania certification system. During the project one ecotourism destination logo was developed along with a webpage for advertising the area -
www.padureacraiului.ro. The promoter also attended 2 tourism fairs (creating and printing 3000 brochures, 1000 biographies of Meziad cave, 500 event calendars and 2000 ecotourism maps). The project contributed at developing and starting up a funding mechanism for the conservation of nature and ecotourism, developing a formal partnership meant to improve the participatory management of the ecotourism destination. The implementation of the present project has created the first steps for Padurea Craiului to become an ecotourism destination and to be certified by the National Tourism Authority. Hence, the visibility of the area has improved on a regional and national scale.
Summary of bilateral results
In terms of achievement at bilateral level, this project improved the knowledge of all partners in what regards implementing this type of projects, as well as better understanding the cultural differences between Norway and Romania but also the complementarities between our countries. On the other hand this project developed a strong base for future cooperation: running two promotional events in Oslo and Bergen in the spring of 2016, followed by an info trip for a journalist and a blogger from Norway in September 2016 (which brought back 2 articles published in early spring of 2017) and finally organizing another promotional event regarding Padurea Craiului in Olso on the 14th of March 2017. In the framework of the present project the Norwegian partner was involved in developing the publications (promotional brochures, ecotourism map), web page development (layout development as well as content management for a better SEO optimization). They also were involved in developing the financial mechanism as well as the development and the implementation of a project financed by EEA Grants bilateral funds.