The Baltic Sea is an attractive boating region that offers more than 1.000 leisure boat harbours and a unique set of sub-destinations with an astonishing variety of nature and culture: From Denmark’s idyllic islands to the sandy coasts at the “South Coast Baltic” in Germany, Poland & Lithuania and the “East Baltic Coast” in Latvia & Estonia, and up to the rocky archipelago in Sweden, Finland and Norway. Here, sailors and motor boaters can experience a natural beauty that literally transcends all borders. They can enjoy bright Scandinavian nights and mild summer temperatures. The next harbour is always within easy reach. And once there, they can quickly become part of a community that is still centred around the shared fascination of boating rather than large boats.

Despite high class infrastructure and its attractive destination profile, however, the Baltic Sea Region still lags behind international competitors like the Mediterranean Sea in terms of visibility and tapping economic potentials of leisure boating. That is why its main boating tourism networks & associations (South Coast Baltic, East Baltic Coast, Union of Swedish Guest Harbours, Association of Leisure Boat Harbours in Denmark, Enterprising Archipelago / Åland) decided to team up for strategic cooperation at BSR-level within the “BaltSusBoating” project. In collaboration with the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the University of Tartu, they will jointly define goals and measures for a collaborative boating destination development & marketing until 2030.

This includes:

1. To establish a pan-Baltic cooperation platform for regular strategic dialogue among the main boating networks & associations, which reach out to more than 900 leisure boat harbour operators in the BSR.
2. To elaborate a “Sustainability Roadmap” for Baltic Sea boating that defines measures around three “condensation points” (sustainable marines, sustainable boats, sustainable behaviour of boaters)
3. Exchange & peer learning activities for marina operators to transfer & roll out good practices to address challenges & opportunities in the post-pandemic leisure boating market.
4. Dialogue with policy makers to acquire further support for the collaborative development of the Baltic Sea into an even more sustainable & competitive boating destination.
5. The iterative development of a joint branding & marketing approach for the Baltic Sea, incl. the testing of it vis-à-vis end-users (e.g. joint Baltic Sea booth at the world’s largest  boating fair “boot” in Düsseldorf)

The results of these activities will be processed into a strategy & action plan for the collaborative boating destination development of the Baltic Sea, which will be adopted as guiding framework for further joint actions until 2030.

By its end in autumn 2024, therefore, BaltSusBoating 2030 will have created an institutional basis and a strategic framework for collaboratively developing the Baltic Sea into an even more sustainable & competitive boating destination by the end of the decade.