Training seminar «Development of war and historical tourism: methods and prospects»

On July, 15 the training seminar « Development of war and historical tourism: methods and prospects» was held within the «Ordinary Man in a Great War» project. The training was organized in a hybrid format both online and offline: the project partners, the experts in tourism and culture were invited to participate. Due to the hybrid event format, project partners from Finland: Naturpolis Ltd and Euroregion ry could join us.

The seminar started with the welcome words from project manager P. Petrova, who told about the first project results and implementation plans for the coming months.
V. Lebedeva, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Karelia, presented an updated concept for the military-historical exposition in the Kalevalsky district: the multimedia, interactive exhibition will appear in the Ethnocultural centre «Kalevalatalo» until the end of 2021.
Ilya Gerasev, Chairman of the board, Karelian Regional Public Fund «Estafeta Pokolenij», told the participants about the implementation of the military-historical project on the example of the project « Frontiers of Petrozavodsk-improvement of memorable places».
M. Viitanen, Project coordinator, Naturpolis Ltd presented the online platform for the tourist route «Ordinary Man in a Great War» and told about the possibilities of promoting tourist products in the online space.
A. Vasilyeva, Project expert, Institute of Economics, KarRC RAS, shared the successful experience in developing and promoting a tourist route by presenting the results of the CBC «Karelia» project « Kalitka – the development of cross-border gastronomic tourism ».
E. Balykova, specialist of the Republican Centre for protection of objects of cultural heritage told about the experience of involving the military history monuments of the Republic of Karelia into the tourism field, and about the cooperation with the travel agencies.
Thanks to O. Lukina, Deputy Chief, the Tourism Department of the Republic of Karelia, the seminar-training participants learned practical tips on elaborating high-quality, involving excursions on military-historical topics.
G. Effe, project coordinator Euroregion Oulu devoted his speech to the creation of the tourist route within the project, special attention was paid to the tourist route cross-border orientation and its popularization possibilities on both sides of the border.

The seminar was finalized by the open discussion when participants summed up the event results and discussed further plans for the project implementation. Thus, in October 2021 the Karelian Research Centre of RAS will celebrate its 75th anniversary. One of the events will be the international conference on several areas: economy, ecology, tourism and culture, where we will present the «Ordinary Man in a Great War» project and its implementation results.