Cosme

Due to the COVID crisis, tourism SMEs were especially affected in the majority of the EU countries. With the objective to recover the tourism sector and keeping in mind the local green deal priorities, this proposal aims at providing support to local businesses (hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops, handicrafts, etc.) working in the field of rural (eco)tourism in Italy (metropolitan city of Messina, Sicily) and Spain, 2 municipalities: Olivenza (province of Badajoz) and San Javier (province of Murcia) in their green and digital transition through capacity building, Local Green Deals implementation, co-creation of smart solutions and partnerships on the local and transnational level between local tourism SMEs, local Municipalities and community.

The overall idea of the touriSME project is to develop the local circular pathway for local tourism and an agroalimentary value-chain ecosystem that includes local restaurants, hotels, local small businesses producing and selling goods, food and services for the tourists in Olivenza (Spain), San Javier (Spain) and metropolitan city of Messina (Italy). The focus should be put on the quality of produced goods and services while ensuring the economic efficiency and productivity of the local tourism business in line with sustainability objectives. The project aims at improving the quality of local tourism value chain through the sustainability, innovation, digital and green transition.

The touriSME project will help all actors of local tourism ecosystem to reach the balance between sustainability, productivity, green & digital transition. The project objectives are linked to the necessity of identifying winning strategies in the local ecotourism market that will enable local tourism businesses to recover their position, quality and financial performance. Among the key competitiveness factors are digitalization, innovation and environmental sustainability.

There is a need to support tourism SMEs in their green and digital transformation in order to contribute to the European Green Deal objectives. To achieve this, we propose to concentrate on transnational and cross-city cooperation between local public administrations and local business focusing on the exchange of good practices, development of collaborative business models, organisation of capacity building activities and co-creation of smart solutions. The touriSME project will build capacity of the local tourism businesses through local (in metropolitan city of Messina, municipalities of Olivenza and San Javier) and transnational (between Italy and Spain) cooperation and partnerships among the key actors of tourism value chain.

The advisory digital services delivered to the tourism SMEs and co-creation of digital solutions will support their digital and green transition and facilitate the creation of digital and sustainable innovation ecosystems for the competitiveness, financial performance and resilience of local tourism businesses.