On Friday, April 30, the introductory conference of the project Active Tourism Meets Advanced Technology in Cross-Border Area - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. was held, in which Varaždin County participates as a leading partner and the Varaždin County Tourist Board, Csurgó Municipality and Pannonia University, Nagykanizsa campus, as project partners.

The total value of the project is 1,245,215.36 euros, of which the EU co-finances 1,058,433.04 euros (85%) from the Interreg V-A Cooperation Program Hungary-Croatia 2014-2020. (European Regional Development Fund).

The conference began with a speech by Radimir Čačić, Varaždin County Prefect, followed by introductory speeches by partner representatives - János Füstös, Csurgó Mayor, Nikolette Simon, Project Manager at Pannonia Nagykanizsa University and Miran Bojanić Morandini, Director of the Tourist Board of the Varaždin CountyTourism Board.

This was followed by a presentation of the visions of the visitor centers that are planned to be set up as part of the project in Varaždin and Csurgó. The conference also presented the main goal of the project - to attract tourists to the border areas of Hungary and Croatia by enabling the creation of new facilities to find local tourist attractions. It is the centers that will provide additional opportunities for heritage research and remove temporal and spatial barriers among visitors by installing a digital window thanks to which they will be able to communicate directly. The application for smartphones based on virtual reality and gamification, which can be downloaded free of charge, will enable the merging of the cross-border area and further popularization of rural areas in terms of tourism, while respecting the principles of sustainable development.