Academics and practitioners from five partner countries came to learn from examples of good practice in the Czech Republic as part of the DEMINA project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, where the project’s educational activity took place from 23 to 27 September.
As part of the so-called Training/Learning Activity, carried out from 23 to 27 September 2022, representatives from Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Croatia first visited Ostrava, where, in addition to the regional centre of Ostrava, they visited parts of Technotrasa, a unique regional tourism product in the Czech Republic. Among the visited places were, for instance, the Old Coal Mine Michal, the Wesselsky Water Mill, the Tatra Truck Museum in Kopřivnice or the tradional sweet pastry manufacture with opportunity to taste so called „Štramberk ears“ pastry.
The participants benefited from the opportunity to learn from good practice, where they could see the result of long-term work to build and maintain the regional tourism product, the involvement of stakeholders, destination management at the regional and local level and, last but not least, the residents themselves as the storytellers of authentic stories. The programme for the partners of the ERASMUS+ project Innovation and further education in destination management – DEMINA was prepared in line with the project activities by Ing. David Karčmář and Ing. Šárka Tittelbachová, Ph.D., who were at the birth of this unique project. During the three days in the Moravian-Silesian Region, the participants also learned directly from the experts who built destination management in the Moravian-Silesian Region a lot about the process of implementing destination management, the necessary steps and techniques, and the problems associated with it.
The DEMINA project deals with education, so the participants of the training week moved from Ostrava to Prague, where the programme continued at the headquarters of the lead partner VŠHE with educational activities in relation to the project outputs such as the Model and Methodology for Destination Management and Audit and the training programmes Destination Management and Destination Audit. The lecturers were the main project coordinator Ing. Lucie Plzáková, Ph.D., the guest speaker was doc. Ing. Monika Palatková, Ph.D., who shared especially her experience gained at the position of Managing Director of the Czech Tourism Agency, and Ing. Dominika Charvátová, a graduate of the University of Applied Sciences, member of the project team.
The last day of the stay in Prague was devoted to the final discussion of the project activities and outputs, as well as publishing activities and further research activities.