TOURISME

The TOURISME project – Improving sustainability of tourism SMEs through knowledge transfer, international cooperation and multi-stakeholder engagement – aims 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.

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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 aims 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 will address 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 pursues 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.

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The transnational and cross-sectoral schemes that will support SMEs foreseen by TOURISME are based on capacity building, knowledge transfer and scaling-up of activities for sustainable growth as well as enabling the uptake of sustainable solutions and access to certifications. This will be achieved through 3 core supporting activities, based on the specific needs of each SME:

• Face-to-face and online capacity building trainings and mentoring on different topics, such as energy efficiency, resources consumption, circular solutions, waste management, eco-design, green procurement, mobility or social innovation;
• Matchmaking SMEs to create synergies business-to-business (B2B) which will facilitate the exchange of good practices among SMEs and technology and sustainable solutions providers;
• Facilitating access to environmental certifications, in particular promoting environmental certifications and other EC initiatives, such as EMAS, EU eco-label, ETIS or EDEN.

ACR+’s main role on the project is being the partner responsible for the project’s communication and dissemination activities. This implies primarily building an audience for receiving news and updates on a regular basis through social media, newsletter and press releases as well as key outputs, milestones achieved and events to be held among others, through various dissemination activities.

ACR+ will also support other technical partners in creating an outreach campaign for recruiting interested SMEs for the capacity building activities as well as assisting in the identification of existing good practices in the field.

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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

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More information:

Erneszt Kovács

Francesco Lembo