Grant for Developing the Cross-Border Croatia – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Montenegro Tourism Offer
Kotor, Montenegro: Institute of Marine Biology, the University of Montenegro, is granted with Eur 410,000 from the European Union for implementation of the project “Explore Cross-border Aquatic Biodiversity – EXChAngE”. Project was submitted on competitive Interreg IPA Cross-border Cooperation Programme Croatia-Bosnia and Herzegovina-Montenegro 2014-2020.
On the project main objective, Dr. Mirko Đurović, Institute Director said, “Activities will be implemented with the main objective to strengthen and diversify the tourism offer through exploring cross-border aquatic biodiversity and to enable better management and sustainable use of cultural and natural heritage. In Kotor, we will develop a new tourism offer – Kotor and Aquarium Boka.”
The project will be implemented by the unique consortium which combines individual expertise and experience of partners, in particular from previous cross-border projects, and has management capacity and skills to implement a project of this size and complexity. Project lead is the University of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina are Tourism Organization of Herzegovina-Neretva county and Nature Park “Hutovo Blato”. Besides the Institute, the partner from Montenegro is Tourism Organization Kotor. The expected project start is January 2020 and duration of 24 months.
Project partners are planning to develop 4 new thematic routes: Dubrovnik and Aquarium, Kotor and Aquarium Boka, Hutovo Blato Aqua Path, and Mostar Old Bridge and River Neretva, all grouped under new cross-border tourism product labeled as the EXCHANGE pack.
