The European project TOURISME began on September 16th 2020, co-financed by the COSME Program and coordinated by Consulta Europa Projects and Innovation.
The project was born from the need to improve the sustainability and competitiveness of tourism SMEs in Europe, under the pretext that a sustainable tourism development, in addition to positive environmental and socio-cultural impacts, provides many benefits derived from the competitive advantage of cost savings and improving the quality of the offer.
Therefore, TOURISME’s main objective is to promote the capacities and skills of tourism SMEs to explore and adopt sustainable solutions through a reinforced transnational and intersectoral collaboration between SMEs and tour operators from different sectors in Spain, Italy, France and Cyprus.
More specifically, the project pursues the following objectives:
1. To design and implement transnational and intersectoral support schemes that promote sustainable growth in the tourism sector through capacity-building, knowledge transfer and international cooperation between SMEs, business accelerators, incubators, development agencies and other decision makers in the tourism industry.
2. Support the adoption of innovative solutions that promote sustainability practices and circular business models.
3. Facilitate the participation of SMEs in environmental certification schemes and other initiatives that promote sustainable tourism, such as EMAS, EDEN and EU Ecolabel.
The project partners are, in addition to Consulta Europa (EC), the Canary Islands Institute of Technology (ITC) from Spain, the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS), Sistemi Formativi Confindustria (SFC) and University of Sant’ Anna (SSSA) from Italy, the Association of Cities and Regions for the Sustainable Management of Resources (ACR+) from Belgium, the Institute of Planning and Urbanization of the Ile-de-France Region (Institute of the Paris Region) from France, and the Nicosia Development Agency (ANEL) from Cyprus. The project has a total budget of 1,322,050.93 euros and a duration of 30 months.