News

On December 11, 2012 in guest house "Laimes Ligzda" near Cēsis, Vidzeme Tourism Association celebrated its 15th anniversary. The event was attended by VTAs' members - entrepreneurs, municipalities, Vidzeme University College, representatives from Tourism Development State Agency, the founders of VTA and others, who had contributed to the development of VTA throughout history. 

Vidzeme Tourism Association was founded as a public organisation in 1997. The main aim of Vidzeme Tourism Association is to bring together people, governmental institutions and businesses working in tourism sector in order to collectively advertise and promote Vidzeme region, as well as to allocate financial resources from the state for tourism development. As of August 2012 Vidzemes Tourism Association has about 100 members, both, local municipalities (27, as of Dec. 2012), private entrepreneurs and educational institutions of Vidzeme.

On November 27, during VTAs' Board meeting the membership of Vidzeme Tourism Association in the European Cultural Tourism Network was approved. The future cooperation will strengthen Vidzeme as a culture destination in Europe, and also promote the implementation of culture projects in the future. The membership comes as no surprise, as the CHARTS project that VTA is currently impelementing, is stressing the necessity for effective partnerships, and Vidzeme tourism industry will definately benefit from the membership through various contacts and participation in future projects.

Four days of seminars and study tours along Latvia’s Baltic Coast have brought wider awareness about EuroVelo 10 – Baltic Sea Route and EuroVelo 13 – Iron Curtain Trail and helped identify what needs to be done in order to complete those sections of the routes.

The autumn is always a busy time for conferences and events related to cycling.  This year has been no exception and the ECF’s EuroVelo Team have been trying to support the National EuroVelo Coordination Centres and Coordinators and our other Project Partners wherever possible.  The good news is that in just about all corners of Europe progress is being made towards the realisation of the 14 EuroVelo routes.

From 11th-13th November, 2012, the second project CHARTS Accessibility to Heritage Workshop will take place in Tullamore, Ireland, organized by the Midland Regional Authority. 

The Workshop will be attended by Mr. Raitis Sijāts, VTA's chairman of the Board and  Ms. Anna Kupče - VTA tourism specialist together with Head of Ērģļi County Municipality - Mr. Guntars Velics, Ms. Linda Zūdiņa - vice-chair of Rauna County Municipality and Ms. Gita Memmēna - head of the Saulkrasti TIC. 

Please, see the Workshop programme below:

On October 17th in Bīriņi Castle the project "CentralBalticCycling" working seminar took place. The main topics of the seminar were "Cycling Friendly Services" in latvia nad best practices in Europe. The seminar was attended  by VTA's Cahirman of the Board - Mr. Raitis Sijāts (also coordinator of the project "CentralBalticCycling" in Vidzeme, Latvia), Ms. Inese Šīrava - Senior expert of the strategic planning at The State Tourism Development Agency and Head of the Q Latvia quality certificate committee as well as internatioanl experts: Mr. Adam Bodor, Director EuroVelo, Cycling Tourism & Regional Policy and Mr. Daniel Mourek - International Project Manager for Greenways.cz, representative of "Danube Tours". In the second part of the seminar all the experts and director of Ogres and Ikšķiles Tourism Development Agency Ieva Skutule explored a cycling study tour in route Ikšķile - Ogre - Ogresgals - Ķegums.

The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) and European Greenways Association (EGWA) hosted their first ever Joint Conference on EuroVelo, Greenways and Cycle Tourism on Wednesday 26th September 2012 in Nantes, France.

The full-day conference included presentations from notable speakers in the fields of cycle tourism and greenway development from across Europe with plenty of forums for discussion about European best practices.  Key topics include:

• web solutions and social media;
• usage monitoring and impact assessment;
• connections to new niches markets (e.g. accessible tourism, senior tourism); and
• political frameworks and funding possibilities.

The programme for the conference is available below.

EuroVelo, Greenways and Cycling Tourism Conference Final Programme

The presentation slides from all of those that used them can be downloaded here.

Photographs from the event can be viewed on the EuroVelo Flickr account here.

The ECF’s article on the event can be viewed here.

The conference was followed by the annual congress of the French National EuroVelo Coordination Centre, Départements & Régions cyclables (DRC), on the 27th and 28th September.  For information view here.

The conference was also attended by Mr. Raitis Sijāts from Vidzeme Tourism Association.