The project targeted the increase in Japanese tourists visits to Central Baltic region by joint efforts of Estonian, Finnish and Latvian rural tourism clusters.

The project was led by Estonian University of Life Sciences and included relevant partner organisations working with rural tourism from Estonia, Latvia and Finland.

The project implemented wide range of activities relevant for attracting Japanese tourists to the Central Baltic region. Those activities included awareness raising and product development among tourist service providers, trainings, hosting media and tour operators visits, creating press articles, participations in JATA travel market, market analysis, new marketing materials, the landing page, itineraries and packages for individual tourists.

During the prorject 252 unique rural tourism secto companies actively participated in project activities. The participating companies represented fields as accommodation, restaurants, catering, leisure, culture and others.

The project emphasised the high value added related to the product development (packaging the rural tourism services into joint journeys and offers), following the Japanese tourists logic to visit more than 1 Central Baltic country while visiting the region and joining forces for active new market entry activities (joint FAM trips, participations in fairs, marketing materials,…).

The project resulted continuing cooperation by rural tourism organisations after the end of project, the use of landing page - https://balticsea.countryholidays.info/ [9] and has led to new cross-border cooperation projects.