During the August in the Štrigova House of Culture two ETIS workshops were held. ETIS (European Tourism Indicator System) is part of the CycleeSeeing Attractour Project co-financed by the Interreg V-A Hungary – Croatia Co-operation Programme 2014-2020. from European Regional Development Fund.
ETIS is a system of indicators suitable for all tourist destinations, encouraging them to adopt a more intelligent approach to tourism planning. It is a management tool, supporting destinations who want to take a sustainable approach to destination management. It is also a monitoring system, easy to use for collecting data and detailed information and to let destinations monitor their performance from one year to another. And an information tool, useful for policy makers, tourism enterprises and other stakeholders. ETIS indicators are subdivided into 4 categories: 1) destination management, 2) social- cultural impact, 3) economic value, 4) environmental impact where following criteria is being monitored and analyzed: reducing transport impact, climate change, solid waste management, sewage treatment, water management, energy usage, landscape and biodiversity protection.
ETIS will be implemented through the project in six phases: 1. Raising public awareness, 2. Establishing a stakeholders working group, 3. Holding two educational trainings, 4. Collecting and recording data, 5. Analysis of results collected for the calendar years 2020 and 2021 and 6. Reporting to stakeholders and to the interested public on the results of ETIS.
The first workshop was held on August 11th on the topic of Introduction to the project “CSA-CycleSeeing Attractour”, the objectives of the introduction of ETIS, the acceptance of the ETIS Implementation Plan, the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders. In this workshop the most important was to decide which indicators are important for this area and which are applicable and measurable given the current situation. The second workshop was held on August 25th on the topic Methodology of planning sustainable tourism based on heritage and natural heritage and the application of ETIS results. The guest lecturer of the second workshop was the director of the Tourism Board of Međimurje County Rudi Grula, who pointed out some interesting numbers about tourism in Međimurje County and what are the most important reasons for tourist to come here. He also pointed out in which direction the tourism development would have to go in order to be sustainable. Workshop participants were members of the working group and interested stakeholders from the municipality of Štrigova. With this workshops the third phase of ETIS implementation was completed.
