Transitioning to a more sustainable and resilient ecosystem – empowering tourism SMEs (SMP-COSME-2023-TOURSME)

Specific objectives

1. Gather best practices and raise awareness regarding resilience, digital, and sustainable changes relevant to tourism SMEs in the tourism ecosystem.
2. Conduct ‘train the trainers’ activities regarding resilience, digital, and sustainable practices for key tourism stakeholders, including business associations, destination management organizations (DMO), and public authorities, to enhance awareness and knowledge spreading in tourism ecosystems.
3. Provide targeted consulting, coaching, and technical support to SMEs in identified tourism subsectors, attempting to cover a wide geographical scope, from management consulting on sustainable measures, digital literacy or implementation of solutions proved efficient to the transition of EU tourism (e.g. Ecolabel/EMAS certification) by tourism SMEs.
4. Offer direct support for the development of new business concepts, projects creating/promoting new products, and fostering cross-sectoral cooperation, with a special focus on projects that increase resilience and develop tourism offerings with other ecosystems (e.g., culture, agri-food, construction, proximity, social economy, textiles).

Eligible activities

The eligible activities include financial support to third parties for innovative collaborative projects.

Themes funded under this call

The actions resulting from this call for proposals shall promote the following themes (the list is not exhaustive):

• diversification in the tourism offer by implementing diversified business models and by tackling seasonality and fluctuations in seasonal tourist flows – be it throughout the year or throughout the territory; targeting different market segments, such as types of clients, origin of clients and sources of income; working with an increased variety of suppliers
• regenerative tourism experiences that respect the authenticity of local tourism offerings while contributing to the well-being of host communities and promote cultural tourism encompassing both tangible and intangible cultural heritage
• the support to remote and rural regions within the EU, with their specific challenges as regards their transition towards a more sustainable and resilient ecosystem.

The activity will aim to provide:

• Direct support to innovative projects presented by third parties, e.g. SMEs,
• Technical support, advice and capacity building to the highest possible number of SMEs based on their needs, attempting to cover a wide geographical scope,
• Collection of best practices with the purpose of providing policy makers with updated, empirical evidence of the implementation of the priorities set out in the Transition Pathway for Tourism.

Expected Impact:

1. Enhanced resilience and competitiveness of tourism SMEs through better uptake of sustainability principles, accessibility aspects, innovation, and digitalisation (i.e. use of new technologies, greening, data) and through increased capacity to track the footprints;

2. New business models in tourism building on digitalisation, new technologies, sustainability, accessibility, services for all types of customers, circularity, involvement of local communities and long-term visitors;

3. Enhanced cooperation along the tourism value chain;

4. Improved transnational and cross-border cooperation, knowledge transfer and peer learning;

5. Support to recovery of the tourism ecosystem from the shocks caused by COVID-19 and the Russian military aggression in Ukraine by developing and providing best practices for recovery investments with long-term effects for green and digital transition.