Business and information cooperation in the area of booking of small accommodation online (KA1020)
Funded by Karelia CBC 2014-2020

Objective of the project

Introducing convenient and inexpensive booking and sales system for small tourist accommodation facilities (mini-hotels, guest houses and tourist camps) to the tourist market in Russia and Finland.

Main activities

• Collection of data and web-site development. - Searching for the owners of accommodation facilities on both sides of the border and concluding agreements with them. - Developing and filling the website (wildacha.com, wildacha.ru, wildacha.fi) during the first 6 months of the project. - Collecting statistical data about tourist preferences for the future training stuff." • Capacity building and project promotions actions. - Implementation of distance learning activities: 5 webinars for owners and/or management staff of accommodation facilities. - Advising and training the owners about promotion of their accommodation facilities and tourist services via websites: wildacha.com, wildacha.ru, wildacha.fi and www.visitkarelia.fi.

Achievements

The prototype of web-based booking and sales system was created by X-Systems company. It is available on wildacha.fi, wildacha.com and wildacha.ru. About 400 Russian and Finnish tourist accommodation facilities are presented on wildacha.ru. Information about accommodation facilities is published in the Finnish, Russian and Englisn languages. Also 5 webinars for the owners of small tourist accommodation facilities were organized. Webinar's topics were legal regulation in guest business, taxation, energy efficiency of small accommodation facilities, consideration of environmental factors in business, business and information cooperation in the area of booking small accommodation online - Wildacha.ru. The webinars were attended by 75 people from Karelia and other cities. 32 participants were trained. All participants got government certificates from the Petrozavodsk State University. All webinars are uploaded to the youtube-channel of our partner PertSU: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF6X8SpjmB8v2X6KGZBJNwA/videos More than 1000 people visit the site every month. Thus, a good and promising online shopping and booking tool was developed. In general, the project increases cross-border economic interaction and trade and helps to solve the problem of losing owners' income, the cause of which is the low workload of facilities.