TOURISME

Presentation

The TOURISME project – Improving sustainability of tourism SMEs through knowledge transfer, international cooperation and multi-stakeholder engagement – aimed to improve the sustainability of SMEs active in the field of tourism, working closely with 62 different SMEs, located in Spain, Italy, Cyprus, and France.

Project co-funded by the European Commission under the COSME programme, 2020 - 2023.

Achieving sustainable tourism development brings numerous benefits derived from the competitive advantage provided by cost savings and the improvement of the quality of the offer. In this sense, to achieve sustainability and improve competitiveness, TOURISME aimed at fostering SMEs’ capacities and skills to explore and uptake solutions through a reinforced transnational and cross-sectoral collaboration amongst tourism SMEs and operators from different sectors in Spain, Italy, France and Cyprus. The project addressed companies covering different sectors of the tourism industry, including coastal tourism, but also natural and cultural tourism and tourism linked to public events (sports, festivals, etc.).

More specifically, TOURISME pursued the following objectives:

  • To design and implement trans-national and cross-sectoral support scheme including capacity building knowledge transfer and scaling-up activities to enable sustainable growth of SMEs in the tourism sector.
  • To support uptake of innovative solutions for sustainable tourism.
  • To support participation of SMEs in certification schemes.

Activities

The transnational and cross-sectoral schemes that supported SMEs under the TOURISME project were based on capacity building, knowledge transfer, and scaling up activities for sustainable growth, as well as enabling the adoption of sustainable solutions and access to certifications. This was achieved through three core supporting activities, tailored to the specific needs of each SME:

  • Face-to-face and online capacity-building training and mentoring on various topics, such as energy efficiency, resource consumption, circular solutions, waste management, eco-design, green procurement, mobility, and social innovation;
  • Matchmaking SMEs to create synergies in business-to-business (B2B) settings, facilitating the exchange of good practices between SMEs and providers of technology and sustainable solutions;
  • Facilitating access to environmental certifications, particularly promoting initiatives like EMAS, the EU eco-label, ETIS, and EDEN.

ACR+ played a key role in the project as the partner responsible for communication and dissemination activities. This included building an audience for regular updates through social media, newsletters, and press releases, as well as sharing key outputs, milestones, and events through various dissemination channels.

ACR+ also supported other technical partners in creating an outreach campaign to recruit interested SMEs for capacity-building activities and assisted in identifying existing good practices in the field.

Partners

TOURISME project leader is Consulta Europa (ES) and its project partners are:

  • ACR+, Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (BE)
  • ITC, Instituto Tecnologico De Canarias (ES)
  • RAS*, Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (IT)
  • SFCC*, Sistemi Formativi Confindustria (IT)
  • SSSA*, Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento S Anna (IT)
  • ORDIF*, Institut d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la région d'Île-de-France (FR)
  • ANEL*, Anaptyxiaki Etaireia Lefkosias (CY)

 * ACR+ member