A substantial shift in consumer choices, preferences, and behaviour has taken hold in the post-COVID-19 landscape, favouring sustainability and digital acceleration. This paradigm change has been fueled by the crisis’s increasing emphasis on global health and public awareness and consciousness of the well-being of the communities. This increased awareness highlights a fundamental need to transfer innovative solutions, products and practices to industry to tackle climate change, sustainability, and digitisation issues.
The tourism industry, which was experiencing rapid growth, must take note of the need for change in light of the climate crisis, community concerns, and changing consumer preferences to become more resilient and competitive.
To meet new needs, demands and challenges, through the European co-funded project Cross-Re-Tour – Breaking silos in the tourism industry: cross-domain open innovation supporting the twin transition for SMEs -, small and medium-sized enterprises in the tourism industry will have access to and knowledge of digital and green tools and business solutions that are used in other sectors or large tourism corporations. These tools and solutions will also have the possibility to be tested, put into practice, and scaled up.
The project, which began in September 2023 and is set to continue for the next three years, has a budget of €3.5 million and is co-financed at 90% through COSME – Europe’s programme for small and medium-sized enterprises. Out of this budget, 2.4 million will be used to support 80 tourism SMEs in implementing innovative solutions developed in partnership with other stakeholders. This support will be fully funded up to 100%.
Objectives
Inform, share and create awareness among tourism SMEs about the existence of green, digital and Circular Economy solutions from other sectors that they can use in their business operations
Provide tourism SMEs with learning opportunities, competitive self-assessment, market intelligence, and knowledge about scalable and replicable solutions
Function as a matchmaker and support SMEs with information to select business partners to speed up the twin transition
Offer SMEs financial support for adapting, redeveloping green, digital and CE innovations developed in corporates or other sectors as well as testing them on their own business operations
Organise awareness raising campaigns, disseminating and exploiting project results and search for commercialisation of best practices, through connecting them to transnational investors and funders
Methodology
To achieve its goals of supporting sustainable innovation towards the twin transition, our project is developed around three ideas that are combined in order to create a unique concept: a set of motion wheels, like a continuous living body, that allows for regenerative and entire circular operations in tourism and hospitality.
