Kosice
Partner's Profile
ASRD (Agency for the support of regional development, www.arr.sk) was founded in 2003 by the Kosice Self governing region to support the regional development towards enhancing the quality of lives of local communities in the region. The Agency is a public, independent non-profit institution operating under public orders and acts.
Our mission is to contribute to more effective and dynamic sustainable development and tourism has been indentified as a priority area for our interventions. In November 2007 the Agency has signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the Creation of the European Network for a Sustainable and Competitive Tourism at the Euromeeting in Florence.
Partner's experience in the field of sustainable tourism
The Agency is implementing several international projects related to tourism focused mainly on supporting development of sustainable tourism in rural areas, on increasing level of cross-border tourism development in Carpathian region (ENPI Programme - EU Neighbouring and Partnership Insatrument), and raising of awareness of attractions of the Košice region (Hungary - Slovakia Cross Border Cooperation Programme).
The Kosice region has its strategic favourable position, neighboring Hungary, Poland and Ukraine being a border region of the EU (the eastern Shenghen border). It always was at the crossroads of trading routes - north, south, east, west, rich on history, multi ethnical population, cultural tradition etc. It is an attractive region with two national parks: Slovak paradise and Slovak karst (Biosphere reserve).
Our Agency works on development of tourism which would not harm the nature, with high quality of services, which could generate an income and thus to achieve our mission: improve quality of lives of the locals.