Mid-term Conference in the project Transdanube.Pearls 

Over 100 representatives of the tourism and mobility sector from the Danube region attended the mid-term conference of the EU project Transdanube.Pearls in Neu-Ulm (Germany) on 11 July 2018. The agenda is available here.

The event was hosted by the Danube Office Ulm/Neu-Ulm and organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Transport Baden-Württemberg. The conference was organized during the International Danube Festival in Ulm/Neu-Ulm that takes place every two years.

The fierst part of the conference addressed future-oriented mobility and tourism offers. Keynote speaker Dr. Roger Sonderegger, lecturer at the University of Lucerne (Switzerland) emphasized that "car-free mobility creates only winners: the climate, the people and the domestic economy". During his speek, he outlined that information about existing mobility services is even more important than the infrastructure that should be provided for further offers. 

The mobility stations in Offenburg that was presented during the conference is one of such a successfull example of tourism and mobility offers. These stations pool different mobility services (e.g. bike rental, car sharing and public transport stops) at one location and thereby guarantee passengers a convenient transition between different means of transport. 

Besides, the presentation of the tourism mobiltiy center in Kärnten (Austria) revelead good practices on how to devleop and offer attractive mobility services to tourists not travelling by car. The mobility information center in Kärnten that includes 8 tourism regions in the surrounding area offers tourists the possibility to easily order shuttle services from the train station to their accommodation and thereby, guarantees sustainable transport on the last mile. This service can also be used by the local inhabitants. 

Before the lunch break, a so-called "market place", regional and international partens have presented additional new mobility and information services along the Danube. Among them were the partners of Transdanube.Pearls that are implementing pilot actions such as bike rental systems, mobiltiy information centers and flexible transport systems for the last mile. Besides, other Danube Transnational Program projects as CITYWALK presented their project activties. 

The second part of the conference focused on the importance and benefits of transnational network, as highlighted by Georg Steiner, director of the tourism organization of Linz. In the following, already existing successful network such as "Alpine Pearls" or "DANUBEPARKS - The Danube River Network of Protected Areas" have been presented. Both networks resulted from projects initiated in the frame of EU funding programes (Alpine Space and the South-East Europe Program) and successfully managed to set up an own institutional structure and to continue working on their priority areas, also with the support of further co-funding and the implementation of new proejcts in the framework of EU funding programes.

In the end of the conference, a panel discussion between international policy makers from Germany, Austria and Serbia, such as the Lord Mayor of the city of Ulm (Gunter Czisch), the head of the department "Sustianable Moblity" in the Ministry of Transport Baden-Württemberg (Christoph Erdmenger), the assistant of the Minister of the Environment from Serbia (Biljana Filipovic) and together with practitioners from the tourism and moblity sector followed. The discussion underlined once more the need for joint action in order to foster sustainable mobility along the Danube region. 

We are happy that more than 50 project partners and institutional representatives as well as over 60 stakeholders from the tourism and mobility sector from Ulm and Neu-Ulm attended the conference!

Further information about the conference is available in the press release or in the subsection Press Articles.

For further pictures, please visit the subsection Gallery.

Subsequent to the event, 40 partners and representatives of tourism organizations along the Danube attended a two-day seminar as a first step to implement the transnational network of Danube.Pearls, dedicated to sustainable mobility in tourism.