South Baltic Winter Bathing Events

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The high seasonality of tourism, and the problems that are linked to this (e.g. unsteady income and failure to retain workforce, low qualification of workforce, over-capacity, overcrowding) is a common challenge in many coastal resorts of the South Baltic. The situation is aggravated by the fact that many of these municipalities depend on tourism as a main, or sole, source of income. The municipality of Mielno seems to have found a way to ease this problem: the promotion of winter bathing, which could attract winter bathing enthusiasts and other tourists in the winter months and thus contribute to prolongation of the tourist season, which is the main objective of this project. Mielno decided to join forces with Bastad, another coastal municipality facing a similar challenge, in order to jointly promote winter bathing as an off-season recreational activity and thus capitalize on their common tradition. The partners will carry out a joint promotion campaign for winter bathing, comprising website, articles in local press, newsletter, photo exhibition, promotion of the project at events in other regions and exhibition stands in public places. The activities of the campaign will be diversified so as to attract both winter bathing enthusiasts and people not yet familiar with this phenomenon. Also two winter bathing events will be organized in Mielno and in Bastad. The events will have a cross-border character, gathering winter bathing enthusiasts from different South Baltic regions, hence providing people with opportunities to interact and join social networks on a cross-border level. As a result, they will contribute to increased intercultural dialogue and understanding between participating regions. The promotion of winter bathing as off-season activity will attract tourists outside the summer season and thus help to prolong the tourist season in the participating municipalities. The promotion campaign will also contribute to the promotion of South Baltic region as a place worth visiting. With the tourist season prolonged and more tourists coming, local people living off tourism will have more opportunities to make money and their economical situation will be more stable. People from general public will gain awareness of its beneficial effects for health and will get the chance to participate in a cross-border event. Other coastal municipalities of the South Baltic region will learn about the potential of winter bathing to stimulate local initiatives and local economy and they will be invited to follow the example of Mielno and Bastad and try to capitalize on winter bathing as an off-season activity. The cooperation initiated by the project will be continued after its completion and winter bathing will be further promoted after the end of the project.

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