Ukraine: Local Development Projects of Regional Importance for Tourism

From ideas to financeable concepts: Using integrated and cooperative approaches to develop the cultural and natural potential for tourism.

The Ukrainian administrative and fiscal decentralisation reform initiated in 2014 provides municipalities with a larger revenue base as well as greater responsibility for maintaining infrastructure.

As many infrastructure projects are difficult to finance on their own, the U-LEAD programme, managed by GOPA, enables municipalities in all 24 regions of Ukraine to submit jointly prepared project proposals and have them co-financed by domestic banks and international financing institutions.

In the field of tourism & leisure, more than 40 project proposals have been developed and condensed into 22 projects via individual selection stages. Since October 2021, Prof. Martin Fontanari has been completing a national and international team of tourism experts who evaluate and improve these project submissions and help to develop them to the decision-making stage.

The project is organised via Zoom conferences and workshops involving up to 100 decision-makers on the Ukrainian side. The motivation of the project promoters is astonishingly high and the learning effects correspondingly pronounced. The consulting spectrum ranges from conceptual and instrumental approaches to destination and product development to assessing the degree of cooperation and the marketability of individual infrastructure projects in the context of sustainability and regional development.