New digital travel guides developed for territories in rural Bulgaria and East Herzegovina
- Rural Pact
- Rural Revitalisation Platform
- Connected rural areas
- Prosperous rural areas
- Stronger Rural Areas
- Digital
- Tourism and heritage
- Research and innovation
- Resilient rural areas
- Youth
- Women
The EU-funded SMART ERA project has released digital travel guides for Devetaki Plateau in northern Bulgaria and East Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The free mobile apps are aimed at bringing two of Europe’s lesser-known rural areas onto the digital tourism map.
Image by ba11istic from Getty Images
The multilingual, interactive travel guides offer curated itineraries, maps of points of interest and multimedia content on the natural and cultural heritage of each area. Visitors can explore the territories through text, audio storytelling, videos and images.
The guides were developed with local partners and communities. They are designed to increase the territories’ visibility, boost visitor numbers and support small-scale local producers’ income, while involving young people and local women in digitising heritage content.
Devetaki Plateau and East Herzegovina – two of SMART ERA’s pilot territories – were selected as part of the project’s goal to address rural areas’ challenges and foster innovation.
The digital guides are connected to the SMART ERA Data Platform, which enables secure exchange of information in near real time. Its data supports advanced dashboards and analytics tools, helping local communities, policymakers and researchers better understand tourism flows and monitor key rural smartness indicators (e.g. insights on the most itineraries viewed and the most point of interests enjoyed).
The apps are part of SMART ERA’s Smart Innovation Packages: tailored toolkits, co-designed with rural communities, which combine digital technologies with non-technological strategies, such as innovative business and governance models.
Explore the latest Rural Pact resources on the topics of tourism and digital, and join the dedicated Community Groups on rural tourism and Smart Villages.