COVID-19 Recovery Through Sustainable Tourism Growth and SME Support (SMP-COSME-2021-TOURSME)

Tourism has been one of the sectors most acutely, and pervasively, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel bans, lockdowns, and safety concerns all contributed to curtailing the growth and development of the tourism ecosystem across the EU, particularly for accommodation services, air travel, trade fairs and cultural events,  with serious spill-over effects on the economic outlook of the Union. On average, tourism contributes to 11% of the EU’s GDP.

While the intensive COVID-19 vaccination campaigns across Europe are enabling travelling and local tourism activities to re-commence, the crisis should be taken as an opportunity to steer the tourism ecosystem towards more sustainable, smarter and resilient practices. This call for proposals is part of the overall COVID-19 recovery strategy for a sustainable tourism ecosystem, whilst being in line with the priorities of the European Commission`s SME strategy and the updated European Industrial Strategy.

The general objective of the action is to monitor the sustainability performance of SMEs in the tourism sector, whilst boosting their awareness, development and capacity in the area of sustainable innovations. The action also aims to support tourism SMEs in developing their skills and capacities in sustainable tourism; to provide capacity building, value chain insights and technical assistance to SMEs; to develop a monitoring framework which regularly collects and makes available data on the sustainability performance of the SMEs; to foster innovative solutions for sustainable tourism; and to build effective mechanisms for best practice exchange and dissemination of transferable tools and knowledge between the SMEs, also at a European level.

For additional information including the Call Terms of Reference, besides the application procedure, please refer to the EU Funding and Tenders Portal.