Cultural and Natural Monuments - an Chance for Renovation of the Cross-Border Tourism After the End of the Coronavirus Pandemic

The rural character of most of the INTERREG AT-CZ program area is hiding a considerable number of anonymous architectural and natural monuments. Number of visitors of these monuments is very low, varying between approximately a couple of thousands people per monument annually. Therefore, it is a common challenge to bring the high number of visitors from the well-known castles, palaces, monasteries and old historical towns to the less visited rural monuments in order to direct them to smaller architectural and natural monuments, which are integrated in this project "Rural Monuments". The project is based on the previous project "Monuments live" ATCZ31, which was completed in December 2019. The aim of the project was to spread the tourists of the region of South Bohemia-Vysocina-Waldviertel-Mühlviertel in the direction from monuments with a high number of visitors to the less visited ones and, therefore, contribute to the increase of their visitor numbers and the associated with it increase in the number of overnight stays in the program area. As a result, 96 monuments were included in the project and eight new cross-border themed cultural routes were planned - Noble families, Rosenbergs, Adrenaline, Wellness, Gastronomy and Cycle routes Lainsitz, Sázava and Thaya. In the period between two projects in spring 2020, the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which completely paralyzed the tourism sector, closed accommodation facilities, liquidated international traffic, etc. The new project "Rural Monuments" has the following main objectives: - Renewal of cross-border tourism after the end of the Corona pandemic - Increasing the number of visitors of small rural monuments, motivating tourists to visit rural regions. By creating the cross-border tourism products, small rural monuments of both countries will be interconnected and presented together as a combined touristic offer. This combined offer should lead to a higher number of longer stops in the rural areas of both local and foreign tourists and an increase in the number of overnight stays. The main project outcome will be an ensemble of different measures: - Initiation of cross-border tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic, application of the first measures - Comparative analysis of rural monuments in the Czech Republic and Austria - comparison of the meaning of such terms as folk architecture, rural monuments, recommendations of common regional topics and tourism products, etc. - Planning of common products - definition of some larger destinations in the Czech Republic and Austria (a total of 10 centers of interest), connecting their surrounding architectural and natural monuments, presented together and offered for visits. - Connecting these destinations – centers of interest – among the regions according to common topics, increasing the intensity of cooperation between tourisic centers, their presentation and offer to travel agencies.