Through the implementation of the ROUTES4ROUTES project, the IADR Association wanted to increase its staff competencies in archaeological heritage management through learning from already existing and tested good practices in the area of cultural route management. The participants would become aware of various models and tools that can be used to better connect the route with the communities archaeological heritage is located in, to make it more visible, and to find new approaches on how to serve as a connecting platform between heritage experts and SME's and tourism workers in order to help develop new business ideas or models for creating new cultural products, which would the overall increase the value of Iron Age archaeological heritage in the Danube region and would result in measurable benefits to the local communities.
The IADR Association deals with presentation, promotion, sustainable development and research of the Iron Age heritage in the Danube region. Currently, it faces challenges of establishing itself as a platform through which Iron Age archaeological heritage experts can collaborate with experts in tourism, local authorities, SME’s and other stakeholders with the aim of giving archaeological heritage additional value by creating new cultural products that would be sustainably managed. The fact that IADR Association currently counts over 30 members across 8 countries makes the route management demanding, as tools and mechanism used in one community cannot usually be translated into another. As the IADR Association was founded and is still largely managed by archaeologists and cultural heritage experts, who have not been trained in tourism or business and are lacking tools to approach these issues interdisciplinary, IADR lacks the know-how on how to tackle these challenges successfully.