One good question about the Nectar trail project is how we have created our collaborating team and specifically, how we have chosen our partners. As already mentioned in our stories session dedicated to our participation in the DETOUR project, the mountain (and each natural place in general) can be experienced in many different ways. DETOUR provides us with the wider framework for building a more resilient and connected tourism ecosystem and we as a team try to create an end to end experience that promotes actual participation during the trip and mountain moments to remember.
Walking through its forests, following a hiking route, crossing a river or looking for its highest peaks are all ways in which someone can come closer to the scene. For me personally food, local products and recipes is ALWAYS the way to go. But when we started thinking about what an original experience around Mount Olympus could look like, we quickly realised that no single perspective would be enough to tell its story and our team would definitely need more “eyes” and viewpoints than the ones we already have as ExperienZ. Before starting with the initial storytelling, we need to briefly introduce our team and the scope of everyone's work in the DETOUR project puzzle.
The ingredients that made this recipe delicious: ExperienZ, Bee Naturalles, Alfred and Dimitris!
A couple that knows Honeybees the best
Also known as “Bee Naturalles”, Chara and Dimitris are partners both in crime and in life! This couple knows everything about bees, their nomadic life in Greece, the good qualities of pure honey and therefore they also organize experiential hands on honey workshops and honey tastings. Having a solid educational background in natural sciences, they are the ones who already travel to Olympus for honey over the year in the context of nomadic beekeeping and therefore they will help with all the educational and informational material on bees!
A guide that worships the mountain scene
Alfred has a very interesting occupation to me, which is being a mountain guide! He leads teams of amateur to more experienced hikers in different areas of Greece, being able to conquer the difficult and diverse terrains of each mountain he decides to cross. As navigating through a mountain requires safety and experience in potential difficulties, he is the one to create the paths on Olympus and write down the routes that will be the basic structural skeleton of the Nectar trail.
A tech-oriented guy that rocks the system
Dimitris is a rather silent person, who is however always on fire when it comes to coding and improving UI/UX. He works in silence but completes all the quests that lead to our beautiful platform of Experienz and its easy to use interface. In this case he helped us create a new dedicated page section about the project and the respective digital green passport concept that will create long term impact to the project. To sum up, he plays a great role in making things happen digitally and especially when it comes to the green passport feature of our project.
Some young explorers who love business and are deeply curious travelers
Finally, there is us, the ExperienZ team: Tasos, Maria and Marianthi, three curious guys with great ideas and a hint of attention deficit :) We all bear some years of business experience and history in all kinds of departments, namely sales, hr, marketing, key accounts and tech, with lots of similarities but even more differences. We are setting the strategy, connecting the dots, fixing communications, setting the deadlines and pretty much orchestrating the project completion though most of its operations details too.
One mountain, many stories
As said, we started with the idea that there are many ways to discover a place, sometimes through something surprisingly small, like one single jar of honey. DETOUR and our collaborating network has given us one way to do that, namely to find and connect multiple perspectives on the same mountain story of Olympus and Litochoro. At the same time, through our “Nectar Trail” project we are raising awareness on environmental and sustainability issues, while introducing technologies, know-how and traveling concepts in order to fully incorporate the needed spectrums for the final guest.
Olympus is a destination with an extraordinary concentration of stories. It is a place of mythology and ancient associations, but also a living natural environment with forests, alpine landscapes, endemic plants, wildlife and dramatic geological formations. Its relationship with the surrounding communities and local people adds another layer, because the mountain is not separated from everyday life.
Why bees, you may ask yourself?
The most central perspective comes from somewhere much smaller, the bee and the way it works in the context of a beehive and its wider environment. One emerging question could be why we choose one specific natural element, when Olympus has multiple examples of flora and fauna to display? But the answer is simple and it has to do with the natural skill of bees to act as communities and the connections they develop with the places they live in. This natural intelligence had already been explained to us from our Bee Naturalles partners, who bring honey workshops to another level. Chara and George provided us with a scientific base of how honeybees react and connect to wider ecosystems, while following a nomadic transfer within the year according to each season. This interaction of bees to the environment and other natural systems is exactly what sparked our thoughts to work and develop a similarly connected multidimensional travel project.
Of course our partner Bee Naturalles played a rather significant role in helping us understand the specificalities of the honey terrain of Olympus and the areas next to it, as they already travel there for nomadic bee cultures and have colleagues and partners there, who also produced good quality honey on Olympus. Simultaneously, our mountain guide Alfred also had the opportunity to offer his knowledge around accessible routes on the mountain itself. In that sense, he could combine honey bee stories and show to guests and tour participants the route that is followed by bee communities over the year. This type of collaborating system is what helps us develop the nectar trail project and glue all the little pieces of the puzzle that will lead to curious, nature loving travelers to enjoy the trip and discover this ecosystem.
One pair of “business” eyes are not enough to create a unique experience of a place. Because a destination becomes much richer when the dots between the people, products, tradition and customs and activity opportunities begin to connect. Therefore, we are still in the process of completing this synergy and building our final product of the “Nectar Trails”, where people would be able to book the trip online, have all the needed accommodations ready and embark on learning about the everyday stories of Olympus. Let’s stay in touch for more!
