On Monday, 8 April 2024, at the Savoia Excelsior Palace Hotel in Trieste, LAS Kras, in cooperation with the ORA Krasa in Brkinov and Promoturismo FVG, offered a valuable training opportunity for cross-border tourism workers. The "Tourism Matching" event is an invitation to cooperation between sustainability-oriented professionals in the fields of hospitality, gastronomy and wine with the aim of deepening the understanding of the local offer of slow tourism, food and drink and creating bridges between Italy and Slovenia and between the Karst and Trieste.
The event was organised in three parts: a round table, a meeting of professionals and a "slow" aperitif. After the official greetings by David Pizziga, President of LAS Kras and Edi Fabjan, KRAS-CARSO II Project Manager at the ORA Kras in Brkini, the round table entitled "Karst and Trieste, small worlds, wide horizons" started, with the participation of some cross-border stakeholders: Francesca Baldereschi, Head of Slow Food Travel at Slow Food Italy, Astrid Prašnikar from ROS. Turist, Institute for Responsible Tourism, and Riccardo Zanellotti, Director of Savoia Excelsior Palace - Starhotels. The meeting was moderated by Sanela Čoralič, journalist of Primorski dnevnik.
After the roundtable, we moved on to the main part of the event, "Meet the players who make travellers' dreams come true". This part was dedicated to meeting the eighteen most important organisers of culinary and outdoor experiences operating in the cross-border area: nine in the Slovenian and nine in the Italian part of the Karst. Each "creator" had its own space where they worked with interested people to develop new cooperation opportunities and professional ideas for tourist hospitality.
The event ended with a "slow" aperitif based on local and sustainable products. Wines from the cross-border area of the Karst and delicacies from farmers operating between Italy and Slovenia were on offer. Three local Slow Food communities, recognised for their respect for nature and its rhythms, presented themselves.
