ABOUT THE RPOJECT
The mountain tourism product High Scardus Trail is a result of the project Future Prospects through Mountain Tourism, implemented by the Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) over the course of 2017. The project's aim was to improve the employment opportunities in the tourism sector in the border region between Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania by developing and promoting existing and new regional adventure tourism offers. The development of the product included: the marking and signposting of 33 hiking trails on five mountain massifs in the cross border region of Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia; identification, selection, and inclusion of accommodation and catering facilities along the trail, as well as points of interest linked to the cultural and natural heritage of the region. In order to upgrade the existing infrastructure, the project supported the start-up and extension of existing small accommodation and catering businesses. Through a tailor-made training programme on rural tourism, over 170 representatives of the targeted communities have increased their knowledge and skills for service provision in the segments of catering, accommodation, small scale production, artisanship, and guiding. The training facilitated creation of wide networks of different potential service providers, which serve to ensure quality tourism offer leading to income generation and new employment opportunities.
ABOUT THE TRAIL
High Scardus Trail is a transnational hiking trail with a total length of 495 km that is found on the mountains in the border areas of Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo. The trail passes through six national parks, two in the Republic of Macedonia, one in the Republic of Kosovo, and three in the Republic of Albania. If you take into account the numerous connecting trails to the main trail, which start/lead to populated areas and serve as access or exit points of the trail, the High Scardus Trail can be seen as a system of interconnected trails. This is especially important for creating a tour.
For the passage of the main trail in its entirety, from its starting point in the northeastern part of the Shari Mountains in Macedonia to its end the Prespa region in Albania, it takes about twenty days hiking, which is two to three times longer than the duration of an average trip in adventure tourism. However, the network character of the path, that is, the existence of a main path and connection links allow the creation of tours of different lengths, durations and difficulty levels, thereby creating numerous opportunities to meet the interests and needs of different categories of hikers and visitors.