European Commission offers Grants to empower Tourism SMEs

It aims at equipping and empowering SMEs to become more resilient by building capacity of SMEs to successfully carry out the twin transition towards more sustainable, digital and competitive practices as prioritised in the Tourism Transition Pathway.

Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of this call for proposals are:

• To collect best practices regarding resilience, digital and sustainable changes relevant to tourism SMEs in the tourism ecosystem, with a view to disseminating them amongst the tourism stakeholders, including tourism SMEs.
• To organise specific training sessions for key tourism stakeholders on increasing resilience, sustainability (in its environmental, social and economic aspects), as well as on digitalisation as an enabler for sustainability. The purpose of this training is to enable these key stakeholders to act as multipliers, by becoming trainers and transferring the knowledge in their local ecosystems, with a view to reaching a high number of tourism SMEs.
• To enable tailored capacity building for tourism SMEs to increase their resilience, sustainability (in its environmental, social and economic aspects), as well as on digitalisation, namely regarding tools and management strategies towards sustainability, consulting on certification, and on available funding that contribute to those goals.
• To support SMEs in the tourism ecosystem to develop and implement new business strategies, new products and cross sectoral approaches that promote and increase resilient practices in their daily activities.

Themes and Priorities

• The actions resulting from this call for proposals shall promote the following themes (the list is not exhaustive):
  • To promote diversification in the tourism offer by:
    • implementing diversified business models;
    • tackling seasonality and fluctuations in seasonal tourist flows, be it throughout the year or throughout the territory;
    • targeting different market segments, such as types of clients, origin of clients and sources of income;
    • working with an increased variety of suppliers.
  • To encourage regenerative tourism experiences that respect the authenticity of local tourism offerings while contributing to the well-being of host communities and promote cultural tourism encompassing both tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
  • To support remote and rural regions within the EU, with their specific challenges as regards their transition towards a more sustainable and resilient ecosystem.
• To meet the general and specific objectives of this call, the call sets the following priorities:
  • To provide clear guidance on management and practical examples of actions and changes for more resilient business, greener and with a higher digital level.
  • To advise tourism SMEs, in their transition towards more sustainable activities, such as regarding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy efficiency, environmentally safe materials, waste management, water consumption.
  • To promote the improvement of tourism SMEs’ staff diversification, provide more equal opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged people, promote equality amongst the workforce by including all genders, creeds, colour, origins and identities.
  • To support tourism businesses (small and large) in improving their staff’s working conditions, as part of social sustainability measures. Specifically, it is paramount to provide ample opportunities for training, upskilling and reskilling. This is crucial to tackle the challenges regarding the workforce in the tourism ecosystem (staff shortages, under skilled workforce, under skilled management regarding resilience, digital and sustainability).
  • To promote innovation, financial robustness, behavioural flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

Scope

• The action will contribute to the transition of the European tourism ecosystem by providing direct and indirect support, be it financial or consultative, including with the intermediary of consortia of organisations of the relevant tourism industry stakeholders, to SMEs, including start-ups and entrepreneurs, who wish to develop innovative concepts and projects contributing to the transition of EU tourism. This may also include further development and transfer of best practices and solutions identified through previous calls.
• The activity will aim to provide:
  • Direct support to innovative projects presented by third parties, e.g. SMEs,
  • Technical support, advice and capacity building to the highest possible number of SMEs based on their needs, attempting to cover a wide geographical scope,
  • Collection of best practices with the purpose of providing policy makers with updated, empirical evidence of the implementation of the priorities set out in the Transition Pathway for Tourism.

Project Budget

• The estimated available call budget is EUR 8 500 000. This budget might be increased by maximum 20%.
• Project budgets (maximum grant amount) are expected to range between EUR 1 700 000 and EUR 2 125 000 per project.
• Duration: Projects should normally range between 30 months and 36 months. Extensions are possible, if duly justified and through an amendment.

Expected Impact

• Enhanced resilience and competitiveness of tourism SMEs through better uptake of sustainability principles, accessibility aspects, innovation, and digitalisation (i.e. use of new technologies, greening, data) and through increased capacity to track the footprints;
• New business models in tourism building on digitalisation, new technologies, sustainability, accessibility, services for all types of customers, circularity, involvement of local communities and long-term visitors;
• Enhanced cooperation along the tourism value chain;
• Improved transnational and cross-border cooperation, knowledge transfer and peer learning;
• Support to recovery of the tourism ecosystem from the shocks caused by COVID-19 and the Russian military aggression in Ukraine by developing and providing best practices for recovery investments with long-term effects for green and digital transition.

Eligible Participants

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
    • non-EU countries:
      • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Single Market Programme

Specific Cases

• Entities from other countries (not listed above) are exceptionally eligible, if the granting authority considers their participation essential for the implementation of the action.
• Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self-employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
• International organisations are eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
• Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.

For more information, visit EC.