Presentation of the budget of the “Historic” project
ČLANAK PODATKOVNOG NOVINARSTVA
Project Historic
Project Historic, with the starting date of 1st January 2019, had the main objective of making natural and cultural heritage a leverage for sustainable and more balanced territorial development. The lead partner Infrastrutture Venete Srl leaded Italian and Croatian partners through the plan of the project, targeting certain groups with the goal of fulfilling the main objective. The project was completed on the 30th of June 2021 with a total budget of € 2,432,995.75. This article will tell more information about this project, as well as explain the work done by the Croatian partners.
The total budget enables the development of responsible, sustainable, and innovative tourism, and it consists of € 2,068 million collected from the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) and € 0.364 million from national co-financing (See picture 1 – presentation of the budget of the “Historic” project).
One of the goals of this project was to target 3 main groups, to which the project is presented, using Augmented Reality, virtual and web applications of the touristic product, and social route tracking. The first and widest target group is the public, after the public, the second main target group consists of local, regional, and national public authorities and the last target group consists of Regional and local development agencies as well as enterprises (in particular SMEs within the cultural and creative industry together with the environmental and tourism sector). The Croatian and Italian partners worked together with the goal of fulfilling certain plans of the project and presenting them to the targeted groups. One of the plans, already mentioned in the text above, was including Augmented Reality, virtual and web applications of the touristic product, and social route tracking which helped contribute to the development of responsible, sustainable, and innovative tourism. With that, another plan was to use innovative tools followed by a common approach that would help create a landscape design for creating a “Historical walk-through”. All these plans will hopefully help bring the goal of this project to reality, which is that this type of Cultural Heritage presentation and valorisation will enrich the tourist offer by creating a recognizable tourist attraction that would attract guests out of the main season. The Croatian partners, Municipality of Medulin and the Municipality of Murter-Kornati, worked with the Municipality of Rovigo, the University of Padua and the Regional Agency for the Right to Study – Venice – partners from Italy. (See picture 2 – Numbers of partners in each country).
The Municipality of Medulin continuously invests in the local community, the extension of the tourist season, and improvement of life quality of the locals. With its’ huge experience, knowledge, financial capacity, and high-quality human resources, the municipality holds vast potential for sustainable growth and development. On the 29th of March 2021, The Municipality of Medulin has financed the realization of a History Park, a small museum inserted into an outdoor landscape dimension, able to retrace the history, traditions, and most curious peculiarities linked to the local past. Located in Bagnole, occupying an area of 970 square meters, the park will be a place where the history of Medulin and the surrounding settlements of Promontore, Pomer, Vincural, Vintian and Valbonasa will be told. The aim of the new park, as we find out, is to create an additional tourist offer for all tourists and visitors to the municipality of Medulin and raise awareness of local people about the need to preserve cultural heritage and popularize cultural heritage by educating locals, especially children and youth, about local heritage. Along that, the Municipality of Medulin is also restructuring the Community Centre of Bagnole.
We learn from the latest news that the park is under construction, but we did not find information on whether the park was successfully built. Therefore, we tried to get in touch with the municipality of Medulin to find out more about the implementation of the project and the construction of the park, but we did not receive a reply to our e-mail.
The implementation of the project will contribute to the development of the Municipality Murter-Kornati by valorising the archaeological heritage, increasing the education of children and young people, raising awareness of the local population and other visitors about the need to preserve the cultural heritage and protect the environment. It will also help popularize the cultural heritage as well as the need for its preservation.
We wanted to know more about the implementation of the project, plans and obstacles that the partners encountered, so we sent them an e-mail with an inquiry. However, we did not receive a response yet.
Our expectations of this project are the increase in tourist visits in the municipalities of Medulin and Murter-Kornati. As displayed on the graphs (See picture 3 – Numbers of tourists in the municipality of Medulin, 2017.–2021.), there was a reduction in tourist arrivals in the period of 2019 and 2020, but since 2020 there has been an increase of tourist visitors in the municipality of Medulin.
With the starting assumption of rising tourist numbers in these two Croatian areas, it was expected that the number of overnight stays in the municipality of Murter-Kornati would be increased over the course of years from 2019 to 2021. However, since the year 2019, there has actually been a decrease in the number of overnight stays (See picture 4 – Number of overnight stays in the municipality of Murter-Kornati, 2017.–2021.). Nevertheless, we are still expecting a rise in these numbers in the following years.
Our goal was to gather information about the participants of this project and to investigate which plans the Croatian participants fulfilled and how the course of the project and these changes affected the number of tourists in Croatia over the stated years. We intend to gather more additional data on the field and expect the project Historic to reach its initial goal of enriching the tourist offers and attracting guests in and out of the main season.
Numbers of tourists in the municipality of Medulin, 2017.–2021
INTERAKTIVNI INFOGRAM