Sustainable Promotion of Atlantic Area (SPAA)

The SPAA project seeks to promote the economic development of European towns, cities and regions in a sustainable and innovative way, by testing the impact of an integrated marketing approach for those places, based on their local distinctiveness.

The project is a grouping of six partners in Europe:

• Chester City Council - lead partner;
• Conference of Atlantic Arc Cities (CAAC) including Burgos, Spain;
• Limerick, Ireland;
• Ourense, Spain;
• Valimar, Portugal;

seeking to address some of the economic challenges they face as sub regional hubs on the periphery of not only their own regions, but also their own countries and the EU as a whole. In this project the focus is to improve economic competitiveness by working together to plan and test different ways of improving the "place marketing" of each partner.

The three key goals of the project:

To develop a marketing dimension of local development

• To explore at the transnational and local level how best to develop cross-sector marketing partnership
• Use distinctiveness qualities of place as a tool for place marketing
• Test the impact of marketing sub-regional hubs on the wider region and its contribution to the polycentric economic development of the Atlantic Area

To share experiences and good practices on a wide scale

• Use inter-regional learning to develop a holistic marketing methodology applicable across the Atlantic Area

To disseminate information

• Develop a joint communication tool for Atlantic promotion and marketing
• Disseminate the information, results and transferable marketing tools widely across the Atlantic region: SPAA Methodology Toolkit.

 The project agenda

Started on February 1st, 2005, the SPAA project is due to last three years, until December 31st, 2007. This project is co-financed by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF) under the Interreg IIB-Atlantic Area programme. The project is divided into four phases:

Starting phase (month 1 to 4):

• Strategic and technical planning of pilot projects: Steering Group and Working Groups meetings

• Launch of benchmarking activity and transnational cooperation : supposed to allow partners to identify their mutual opportunities and challenges
• Launch of studies in each region to mark out specific standard economic data necessary to prepare SPAA Methodology Toolkit.

Main phase (month 5 to 23):

• Preparation and development of a marketing strategy by each partner

• Steering Group and Working Groups meetings to evaluate progress and results of pilot

Consolidation phase (month 24 to 28):

• Study of the economic impact of the different marketing campaigns

• Dissemination of results thanks to a joint communication tool (website)
• Final international conference to present the results of the project

Phase of preparation of the final report (month 29 to 33):

• Participation of all the partners to prepare the final report (including the final evaluation report and the consolidated financial audit).

Following is a programme of the presentations that took place in the course of the SPAA Legacy Conference on the 28th June 2007 at which time the SPAA Methodology Toolkit was introduced to the European delegates.

Project Team Contacts for the programme:

Email: projectmanagement@chester.gov.uk
Postal address: Chester City Council, The Forum, Chester CH1 2HS, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 1244 402107
Fax: +44 1244 310071
For further information download the SPAA Project guide (64kb)

Partner Links

CAAC

• www.atlanticcities.eu (external link)
• www.spaa-atlantic.org (external link)

CAAC have the key task of the dissemination of the SPAA Project information on their website, and it contains information from all of the partners.

Limerick

• www.limerick.ie (external link)
• www.limerickfestivals.com (external link)

Ourense

• www.inorde.com (external link)
• www.turismourense.com (external link)

Valimar

• www.valimar.org (external link)