Sustainable growth and building resilience in tourism – empowering SMEs to carry out the twin transition

1. Enhanced resilience and competitiveness of tourism SMEs through better uptake of sustainability principles (including by making use of existing tools such as the EU Ecolabel for tourist accommodation services), innovation, digital tools and data and through improved capacity to consider, assess and follow the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of tourism services and activities;

2. New business models in tourism building on digitalisation, new technologies, sustainability, circularity, authentic and cultural experiences, and engagement of local communities;

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 COVID-19 crisis by developing and sharing best practices for recovery investments with long-term effects for green and digital transition.

Qualitative and quantitative indicators for the action:

• Number of countries participating in transnational cooperation projects;
• Number of SMEs directly supported;
• The diversity of support actions organised.

This call for proposals will be part of the overall COVID-19 recovery strategy for a sustainable tourism ecosystem and in particular aim at equipping and empowering SMEs in their twin transition efforts in line with the Tourism Transition Pathway (under the Industrial Strategy Update (COM(2021)350 final).

The action aims to guide the forward-looking recovery of the tourism ecosystem by providing support, including with the intermediary of consortia of organisations of the relevant tourism industry stakeholders, to the digital and green transformation of tourism companies, particularly SMEs, and boosting innovation, resilience, sustainability and quality along the tourism value chain. The activity may also include provision of financial support to (e.g. SMEs and B2B matchmaking).