This year’s last session of Council of the sixth term of the Polish Tourism Organisation took place in Kazimierz Dolny on 14-15 December. The Council unanimously accepted changes in the POT Statute. The session was attended by President of the Polish Tourism Organisation Robert Andrzejczyk.

On the second day of the sessions the Council of POT (Polska Organizacja Turystyczna – POT) approved a protocol from the previous debates held on 9 November. The President of POT also proposed changes in the Statute, arguing that they were to predominantly ease the flow of information, regulate the division of tasks, and generate savings.

“The introduced changes will reduce the number of units and alter the range of their tasks thus rendering the structure more lucid”, explained President Robert Andrzejczyk.

The Council unanimously accepted changes of the POT Statute.

On the first day Dorota Lachowska, Deputy Director of the Lublin Regional Tourist Organisation, gave a presentation on “The potential of tourism in the region of Lublin in reference to the conception of sustainable development”. The paper was based on studies conducted by the Chief Statistical Office in 2016 and research carried out by Dr Krzysztof Łopaciński. The speaker also drew attention to the significance of the promotion of smaller tourist centres and indicated the way in which it is possible to redirect tourist traffic from major tourist attractions to their smaller and less-known counterparts. 

Zbigniew Pacholik from the “Green Ring” Local Action Group informed about support for the development of tourism in rural areas during the years 2010-2014 and outlined the mechanism of obtaining funds from the European Union and Swiss Contribution.

Wiesław Czernic, Vice-President of the Social Tourism Council co-working with the Minister of Sport and Tourism, spoke about the functioning of local tourism organisations upon the example of the Land of Loess Gorges.

The presentations were followed by a discussion in which President Robert Andrzejczyk (POT) accentuated the essence of cooperation with science and the process of conducting studies. In his opinion, nationwide studies involving a single methodology should be established to make it possible to become acquainted with the nature of the outcome’s foundations, preferably identical for all such research.