Engage tourism SMEs through Online Dialogues
Identify knowledge gaps and constraints during the twin transition
Present a market scan of solutions in digital and green practices
Within this phase, the key objective is to identify SMEs’ constraints in up-taking existing innovations and to improve SMEs’ information and knowledge base on existing innovations available to them.
This will be done through online dialogues with SME owners to understand skills, knowledge and information gaps and what prevents them from up-taking tools, instruments and practices towards a more digitalised and greener business operation.
Moreover, a market supply scan will be presented, that inventories existing solutions, measures and tools across six technical areas of business operations and two
transversal/human skills development areas for the constraints previously identified.
8 exploration areas
Plastic
Mobility
Food
Water
Equipment
Energy
Client nudging
Staff nudging
Utilise an online diagnostic tool for SMEs to assess challenges – AAT.
Establish a knowledge hub to address constraints and propose solutions.
Expand the TourBIZZ community, connecting SMEs with solutions suppliers from other sectors.
In this phase, SMEs can measure and assess their potential to replicate and adapt existing solutions with an online diagnostic tool.
Also, it will facilitate the collaboration of SMEs with partners through the development of a cross-domain knowledge hub for the ones that express willingness to team up with solution providers and learn together in adapting and adjusting existing tools to their own operations.
The knowledge hub shall be developed with the existing community already present in the TourBIZZ environment as set by the Tourban and Tourbit projects. It is foreseen that a minimum number of 160 SMEs will start collaborating in this knowledge hub that will offer training activities, business advisory services and matchmaking between:
- Tourism SMEs in search of solutions to challenges they face in one of the 6 areas of business operations or the 2 areas of human capital development;
- Possible businesses or organisations that may answer these challenges, with innovations tested in other sectors.
An estimated 160 SMEs shall receive business advisory services from the knowledge hub.
Open call for applications providing financial support to 80 tourism SMEs
Involve transnational communication, dissemination, and commercialization efforts
Final show-and-share event for replicability and scalability
This stage will launch a cross-domain open innovation programme through an open call for applicants that will provide 80 tourism SMEs and their partners from the 8 countries enrolled in the project with financial support of up to 30.000€.
The goal is to build partnerships composed of:
- one or several, minimum two (2) and maximum four (4) tourism SME(s).
- minimum two (2) and maximum four (4) partners, including minimum one (1) tourism SME and minimum one (1) public or private entity that is/are instrumental for the tourism SME(s) to implement the project.
The partnerships must adapt, improve, or modify existing tools, services, practices, and solutions that have high potential to be applied in tourism SMEs operations to foster sustainability and digitization.
Finally, the 80 innovative projects shall be presented during a show-and-share event combined with an investor pitch. The different actions developed during the project lifetime are crucial opportunities to communicate and disseminate results and possible impacts of open innovation processes to a broader international audience of destination stakeholders and non-tourism partners.