Quality Schemes in Rural Tourism

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Quality Schemes in Rural Tourism
EuroGites European Federation of Country and
Farm Tourism
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Who we are

• Founded in 1990
• 18 European Countries
• 22 National and Regional Organizations
• More than 150.000 accommodations
• More than 1.000.000 bedplaces

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Why is Quality of interest?

• State of Art amongst members in 2000
• 98 of accommodations is subject to Quality
  control
• 81 of them takes part in Quality Classification
  Schemes
• More than 50 of the members have grading schemes
• Foreign visitors make up 10-60 of clients, and
  20-80 of total bednights

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This means ....

• European clients
• are used to Quality Schemes
• have expectations around them
• are a very interesting market for RT owners

.... but ....
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• Clients cannot trust in the similarity of
  different systems in other countries
• Owners do not know what their clients expect
• Organizations need to benchmark their own systems
  to others
• Schools require material and documentation to
  train all the above

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This project will achieve

• Transparency for clients
• Help for owners to improve and adapt
• Define needs and contents for training
• Marketing information for organizations

by ....
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... providing tools for

• Owners
• Self-evaluation
• Improvement Plan
• Clients
• International Transparency, online on Internet
• Organizations
• Compare their own product with competitors
• Set up marketing strategies
• Trainers
• Documentation and teaching materials

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Europe-wide results

• Knowledge about customer requierements and
  expectations
• Unified Data-Base for Quality Schemes
• Minimum Standard Requierements for all countries
• Cross-system transparency
• Unified control and evaluation methodology

and thus ...
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• Improve over-all Quality of installations and
  services
• Create trust through transparency
• Open new sales channels
• ..... and as a final result
• Increase the number of foreign visitors to YOUR
  establishment !!

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Paldies!

• for your attention