To collect honey like bees, "Butiner"

Best Practice

Topics

• Regional value added
• Mobility, New forms of decision-making, Policies and instruments

Short description

The project is located within the French, Italian and Swiss Alpine perimeter. «Butiner» (like the bees that collect honey) is based on the concept of slow tourism. The project tries to contribute to the effective protection of alpine regions, creating a network of local and regional actors of different sectors (agriculture, torism, trade, handicraft, cultural services). The project increases the value of the regional and local know-how and constitutes a platform for economic promotion but also for ecological actions. The project establishes within the alpine population and the urban one. A fisrt part of the project have been realized in the Swiss alpine region of Mont Blanc.

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Project executive

Mountain Wilderness is an international organization established in 1987, which aims to preserve and protect alpine regions and to support alternative forms of tourism. The protection of Mont Blanc massif is one of its most important projects. Since 1998, MW supports the protection of natural and cultural areas on a regional level.

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Participants

At the moment, the partners of the project are 60 and they all come from the Swiss side of the Mont Blanc massif. The aim is to develop a network even on the french and italian sides and, when this will be done, the partners will be around 200. The city councils are core partners to the project, but it is also important to support and develop the network with tour leaders, guides and the Swiss Alpine Club. The coordinator of the project has been the key person who had to stimulate the network, to enlarge it, to organize activities, to develop promotion ideas, to co-operate and to communicate. The participants can identify with the project and they are waiting for more results.

Objectives

1. To search new ways to preserve mountain regions with the involvement of the local community. 2. To make aware the local actors (involved in different sectors such as agriculture, trade, tourism, culture and heritage) of the value of "slow tourism". 3. To create a network of partners divided into different categories: products of the territory, nature excursions, culture and heritage, accomodation close to nature. 4. To stimulate the regional economy through the development of products chains. 5. To reach forms of local and self-management. 6. To enlarge and to root the project throughout the whole Mont Blanc region (Valais, Vallée d'Aoste, Haute-Savoie). 7. To establish a methodology that can guarantee the transferability of the project to other regions.

Activities

1. Publication and distribution of a dépliant with a description of each offer and proposal of a network of pathways. 2. Launch and management of an internet site. 3.Promotion activities to support "slow tourism" and the project (Mont Blanc: from Alps to Fouly and Fête des Cinq Continents in Martigny). 4. Annual meeting in the month of October during which the evaluation of the season, the discussion on precise themes, the remarks on the future and the planning of the transfer towards self-management will take place. 5. Excursions that match the discovery of nature with the tasting of local products. 6. Co-operation with the media authors of publications related to tourism and "slow tourism". 7. Participation to the consulting national and regional processes related to the actors involved in local ecology (Millieux Sensibles group in EMB, forests management in Orsières, Plein Ciel project in Martigny).

Process

Process: 1. definition of "slow tourism", 2. in loco survey, 3. research of financements for the publication, 4. editing of the publication and launch of a web site, 5. creation and stimulation of a network, 6. cooperation with the local and regional structures in order to better integrate the project, 7. starting of the process of transfer towards self-management. The methodology followed has been the one of participation.

Results

1. To make people aware of the importance of the protection of environment, of the necessity to preserve the Mont Blanc massif, of the values of slow tourism, which has to be organized in a network to be developped among the local authorities and communities. 2. To start the process towards the self-management of the project. 3. To develop exchanges inside the network. 4.Gradual enlargement of the network to the french and italian sides. 5. Development of local products to stimulate the regional economy (all-inclusive offers and pick-nick with local products). 6. Collaboration with city councils, development societies, tourism offices, local and regional organisations (for instance the Association pour l'Aménagement de la Région de Martigny, etc.), tourism promotion projects (such as Les Portes du Gd-St-Bernard), cultural projects (such as the centenary celebrations for the Martigny-Châtelard railway). 7. Award given by Suisse Tourisme to one of the project's partners.

Evaluation

The project has only been evaluated from the inside point of view. The results of this evaluation underline the necessity of more economic resources for the promotion and of a form of self-management.

Difficulties

The main difficulties still are the public authority's and partners' scepticism, the integration of the project in the existing structures, the transfer of the project towards a form of self-management.

Budget

100.000,00 euro (Euro)

Financial backer

The costs related to the coordination and to the publication of the dépliant have been sponsored 45.000 Chf. Both national and local investments on private and public levels.

Source of information

Competition

Participant at the 2005 Future in the Alps competition

Homepage

http://www.butiner.ch http:// www.langsamturismus.ch

Project executive as above

Contact person as above

Comments

Impact on nature and environment

The project contributes to the preservation and improvement of nature and environment through: 1. the development of a network of alternative pathways, avoiding the building of high impact infrastructures. 2. encouraging the visitors to remain in the region and to move by foot. 3. the promotion of shared transports. 4. supporting the use of local resources and products. 5. the creation of a platform of common understanding among the partners. The number of partners involved in the project is 60, 20.000 visitors every year.

Economic value added

1. Creation of a short-cycle market for the regional products. 2. Development and diversification of the offer. 3. Creation of a "Butiner" label. 4. Enlargement of the initiative to the mountain refuges located on the Mont Blanc region and promotion of the regional products. It is difficult to quantify the economic value added generated by the project since there are no statistical datas available yet, but interesting indicators to consider are the comparison between long and short cycles, the impact of the label on the price, the number of persons who have asked for "Butiner" and the money they have spent, the number of visitors per year.

Socio-cultural value added

The project contributes to socio-cultural value added through: 1. the valorization agro-pastoral heritage, avoiding the loss of know-how. 2. the strengthening of the local identity and culture (the project gives way to the elderly's know-how, but it also supports those young people who want to make the public know them, for instance at the exposition in Sembrancher). 3. the demostration of great variety of roles played by both males and females (30% of the offers come from females).

Innovative content

The project is innovative because: 1.it is an initiative inspired by the desire to protect the envirnoment that becomes a regional vehicles for the development of sustainable tourism; 2. it supports the development of a network of partners belonging from different economic sectors; 3. it involves the partners in the organization of the tourist offers.

Good governance

All the actors have been personally contacted in the first phase, through mails and phone calls. Each decision is made during the annual meeting, which happens in October. During 2004/2005 winter, a questionnaire dealing with the degree of involvement and the interest about the project has been sent to all the partners. The project has been launched in 2003 with the commitment of the members of the local community. The local public authorities committed themeselves in the project in 2004.

PR impact

The general public has been informed about the project through the three main medias: newspapers (15 papers), radio (1 interview and 1 radio programme entirely dedicated to the project) and television (1 detailed interview during the news). Further on, the project has been supported through a web site. More than 500 persons have required the brochure of the project. The general public is also informed about the project during the days for slow tourism and the excursions.

Multiplier effect / networking

Mountain Wilderness France has launched the same project last summer in the Belledonne massif. The model of slow tourism has been applied and the name "Butiner" has been given to the project. In Switzerland a first contact has been established with the project Imalp in Val d'Hérens in the field of agri-tourism and of the label «viande d'Hérens».

Transferability

The entire methodology as well as the theoretical basis of slow tourisme can be easely tranferred. The selection of partners and the regional integration will be different in every region, but the selection criterias, the ways to create a network and the activities can be transferred everywhere. Butiner can find his best expression in those regions that have little infrastructures and that maintain high natural values. The basic conditions to implement the project are an intact environment with a living cultural heritage and the wishes of the local community and of the public authority to start and to support it.

Further information