BSTC - Baltic Sea Tourism Center

What did the project change?

The Baltic Sea Tourism Center (BSTC) has been created as a service platform for a united tourism development in the South Baltic region.

The BSTC is allowing a constant exchange between organisations from different countries, allowing the Baltic Sea region to develop sustainable tourism together.

What was the challenge?

Tourism strategies and offers are usually developed regionally or nationally across the Baltic Sea region. There was no roof organisation for the development of sustainable tourism across borders along the Baltic Sea's coast.

In order to address joint challenges across the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea - such as the attractiveness for tourism in all the year's seasons - a joint cross-border organisation became necessary. 

What did the project create?

The project created the cross-border service unit, the "Baltic Sea Tourism Center", a roof organisation for tourism stakeholders throughout the Baltic Sea Region that combines different services and actors in the field of sustainable tourism development, providing a platform for communication and cooperation.

Project Outputs

Co-Development Concept - Handbook for facilitators

Joint Marketing Strategy for BSTC for Active Tourism

Expert group "Training Offers"

Convention - BSTC as European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC)

Success Story

Baltic Sea Tourism Center - The outputs and structure of the BSTC

Project Website

Please find the BSTC Project Website here.

Please find the website for the Baltic Sea as a travel destination here.

Full project description

The project involves five partners from Germany, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania, representing different type of organisations and competences: a foundation, an association as well as the scientific sector and national/ regional tourism authorities. The partnership is supported by nine associated partners, representing tourist organisations, national/ regional authorities, business from all Programme area as well as from outside (Finland).

The overall idea of the project is to improve cross-border tourism communication and cooperation by establishing a permanent service unit – the Baltic Sea Tourism Center (BSTC). Apart of that, the project aims at developing and implementing active tourism products in the green and blue tourism market around natural and cultural assets of the South Baltic region in order to extend the tourist season and thus addressing seasonality challenge. The project will also launch an international destination campaign in selected source markets to increase the number of international visitors to the South Baltic region.
The project’s activities are organised as follows: at first, an operational service unit (BSTC) will be established to connect tourism stakeholders in the region. This will be followed by the development of an active tourism product development methodology (and its implementation) around the natural and cultural assets of the South Baltic region. In order to bring up more tourists to the region, the project will organise a joint destination campaign in the selected source markets (the UK and Austria). The main target groups are managers of heritage sites, tourist agencies, media (tourism), authorities and organisations dealing with the topics of active tourism, and end users (visitors).