PROJECT CONCEPTS OF THE REGIONAL SECTOR PROGRAMME: Increasing the attractiveness of ATU Gagauzia for domestic and foreign tourists Authors: Angela Cascaval, Svetlana Lazar, Vitalii Chiurcciu, Svetlana Ghenova, Olga Aculova, Maria Nicolaev and Alla Cernioglo. Developed within EU funded project: “Technical Assistance for the integration of ATU Gagauzia in the national framework for regional development” – Contract № 2017/387 – 564 with the support of consortium: PLANET, AVENSA Consulting, INCOM Ltd. Project partners Executive Committee of Gagauzia Agency for Regional Development of Gagauzia This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. CONCEPT “AT-PROLIN” 7 CONCEPT “AVDARMA” 17 CONCEPT “GAGAUZIA” DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ORGANISATION 25 CONCEPT “GAGAUZ HERITAGE” 33 CONCEPT “THE GAGAUZ CARPET” 43 CONCEPT “GEOPARK” 51 CONCEPT “CARBALIA ECO-PARK” 59 CONCEPT “MEDICAL AND HEALTH TOURISM” 67 CONCEPT “SUPPORT TO LOCAL ARTISANS” 76 CONCEPT “WINE ROUTE” 85 Summary As a result of analysis, in order to determine the degree of attractiveness of the region of ATU Gagauzia de- velopment, there were made general conclusions which became the basis for defining the objectives of the program to increase the tourist attractiveness of the region. • Tourism in Gagauzia is very poorly developed. The weak competition in tourist services market, lack of quality management of the development of tourist offer led to the fact that the ratio of price and quality of services makes them unattractive for tourists, mostly tourists spend no more than one day in Gagauzia. • The diaspora of Gagauzia sees the tourism potential of the region, based on the traditions and culture of the people, on the historical and natural heritage. Representatives of the diaspora to improve the situa- tion in the field of tourism offer the organization of new attractive tourist events, focusing on improving the quality of tourist services, with great attention should be paid to sources of information and active and effective promotion of the region outside the country. • Only 10% of the surveyed respondents of the target group of businessmen today are ready to develop tourism activities, of which 20% are ready to invest their money in tourism development today. Many of those who are not ready to invest in tourism today still want to develop additional activities, including tourism, but they are not informed about the opportunities that exist in this area. The program will be able to help them identify such opportunities. This means that the business wants to invest and develop tour- ism, but it needs financial and technical support programs (information, promotion, training is what most of the respondents noted). • LIGs of Gagauzia have already begun to develop and implement projects for the development of tourism, but they lack experience and knowledge at the regional and local level for proper planning of tourism activities. • Tourism resources of Gagauzia allow organizing a wide range of types of tourism, but most of them need investments in order to create appropriate conditions for their inclusion in the tourist turnover. At the same time, the concentration of available tourism resources is not sufficient to concentrate on a particular type of tourism and allows you to combine different types of tourism to cover several categories of tour- ists. In the complex you can provide good wines, food, interesting information, experience and a lot of positive emotions from communicating with the residents of the region and knowing the culture and his- tory of the Gagauz people. A multi-criteria analysis confirmed that experimental-cognitive tourism is the most optimal direction for tourism in Gagauzia. • The degree of attractiveness of tourism in Gagauzia is not at the highest level, but not very low, thanks to the increased interest in the knowledge of the Gagauz people, their culture and history. The low level of quality of tourist services in Gagauzia and the increased interest in the region confirms that there is po- tential for the development of tourism, but it is necessary to improve the quality of tourist services and prepare appropriate personnel for their provision, to ensure strong promotion and relevant information to tourists. • Travel agencies have confirmed that the feature of Gagauzia is a diverse culture, language, traditions and heritage, which are mainly interesting for urban tourists. This makes the region attractive not only for ex- ternal tourists, but also for domestic tourists. The fact that very few tourists return (mostly tourists from Turkey) speaks of the low quality of services and the absence of a variety of tourist offers. It can be said that the expectations of tourists do not coincide with the quality of services received. Mission of the programme: Sustainable development of tourism in ATU Gagauzia, through achieving a balance in implementation of economic, environmental, social and cultural development goals of the region, taking into account the interests of tourists, region itself and local population, based on rational use of available tourist resources and compre- hensive partnership: regional and local authorities, local residents and business Vision of the programme: Gagauzia – successfully implemented, popular tourist destination, within the framework of the national tour- ist brand. Strategic goal of the programme: Provide acceptable conditions for the long – term development of tourism in Gagauzia, so that by attracting investment in development and improving the quality of tourist services, encouraging the opening of new jobs and efficient use of tourist resources in the region, gradually, by 2025, increase the DIRECT CONTRIBUTION of tourism to WWWP to 1%. Specific objectives of tourism development programme in ATU Gagauzia: 1. Promotion of improvement of quality of tourist services and their diversity in such a way as to increase the stay of foreign tourists in Gagauzia on average up to 3 days; 2. Development of infrastructure of rural tourism in Gagauzia, involving at least 80% of the population cen- tres of the region in tourism activities (until 2025); 3. Growth of domestic tourists in Gagauzia, by creating conditions for active recreation, combined with sports, medical and other related activities, on the basis of at least 2 national level facilities. The development of the tourism industry in the region will be ensured by the following priority areas identi- fied on the basis of a SWOT analysis: 1. Development of infrastructure for management, monitoring and evaluation of the development of tour- ism at the regional level, which will include the management of tourist information flow, and will represent the interests of all parties interested in the development of tourism; 2. Development of the infrastructure of access to existing tourism resources, to improve their capitalisation (effective use for tourism purposes); 3. Powerful and effective promotion of a tourist destination - Gagauzia, advertising and informational sup- port for the promotion of a tourist product in the domestic and international markets - digitization of tourist information resources; 4. Encouraging the creation of tourism clusters and the development of networking among all interested parties in the development of tourism; 5. Preparation of human resources for provision and promotion of high quality tourist services. To achieve the goals and objectives of the program, more than 100 ideas of projects for the development of tourism services in the region were received, which were received from the SARD project, from local and district administrations, the non-governmental and business sectors in the process of meetings organised in the re- gional centres of the region. Based on their analysis, the working group formulated and selected 10 concepts of integrated projects, which, taking into account the initiatives, experience, resources, interest and vision of the localities of the region, cover 80% of the settlements (mayoralties) of Gagauzia and contribute to the achievement of all 3 specific program goals. At least 3 out of 5 established priorities of the region’s tourism attractiveness development program are included in the objectives of each concept. Thus, each developed concept covers several localities in the region, forming micro-zones of program im- pact, where activities are grouped by common goals. The goals are formulated depending on the general prob- lems that need to be addressed in the micro-zone or depending on the opportunities for the development of tourism services in this target zone. For each concept, the necessary investments were calculated, divided into categories of possible funding: grants, budget (local and regional) and private investments. Thus, the implementation of the developed con- cepts will help to unite the efforts of all interested parties, will allow to achieve tangible positive changes in the development of tourism in Gagauzia. Each concept can be implemented in stages and each result of one con- cept can be implemented in a separate small project. Also, the developed concepts were analyzed according to 10 established criteria, in order to prioritize the implementation of investments in tourism infrastructure. The programme implementation measures were developed on the basis of the identified project concepts, which include the activities and tasks of not only regional but