On Friday the 4th of September, NECSTouR Permanent Secretariat organised a workshop with tourism stakeholders of the village of Burg-Reuland in Eastern Belgium. As the partner following the Belgian pilot village of the CHARM project, NECSTouR was responsible to put together this working session. I was co-organised by the Tourist Info Burö of Burg-Reuland/Ouren, with the support of our member the German-speaking community of Belgium.

Among the benefits to be one of the 10 CHARM pilot villages, there is the training session aiming to apply the CHARM methodology. And after a surprisingly good summer overall for Burg-Reuland, the local stakeholders, representing both the public and private sides, took advantage of this working session to discuss among themselves for the evaluation of the villages’ tourism resources. They participated in cultural product developments for national and international markets following the CHARM strategy developed by the consortium. NECSTouR is especially grateful to had the presence of the burgmeister Marion Dhur.

Next steps. Those products will be refined with the help of CHARM tourism experts and presented to the stakeholders during another meeting in Burg-Reuland. During this occasion, CHARM communication partners will capture those experiences in order to be integrated into an audiovisual communication tool.

The CHARMing Villages project is co-funded by the COSME program of the European Union. The project aims at internationally position Europe as an integral destination of quality and excellence for cultural tourism, by promoting its most charming rural villages. The project have targeted 10 test villages, including Burg-Reuland, the only one in Belgium.