Speleological Tourism Development in the Southern Adriatic Area
In the Adriatic area, the existing speleological heritage has been discovered and studied only to a limited extent. In fact, a part of the karst heritage is appreciated and properly enhanced while another is less known and boosted. In particular, in Albania, despite the enormous potential of karst landscapes, consisting in 7250 km2 plus 260 km2 of evaporitic rocks, there are not enough trained speleologists, associations or groups that practice speleological activities for tourists. Facing and improving this situation affecting the programme area is the main challenge of CAVES. The overall objective of the project is to foster the speleological tourism sector in order to promote show caves through planning two new itineraries and creating a cross-border network to exchange experiences. The expected change is an increase in the offer related to the speleological tourism in the programme area. To achieve this goal, LP will organize a workshop with Albanian speleological personnel, training them to carry out explorations throughout the national territory and accompany hikers in horizontal caves, sharing the best practices of GSM and the guides of Castellana caves. Following this first output, a B2B activity will be organized in Albania between tourist operators in order to promote the two itineraries valorizing Albanian karst areas and their natural assets. Finally, the third project output will be a Seminar on speleological karst phenomena, organized by LP in cooperation with the Polytechnic of Bari with the aim to create a joint cross-border strategy promoting speleological sustainable tourism also thanks to the contribution of experts from Montenegro. The project will adopt a new approach that will enable operators of this niche tourism sector to work together, exchanging good practices and implementing a successful trans-boundary strategy to enhance and diversify offer of speleological tourism.