Community of Responsible Recreational Initiatives in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Community of Responsible Recreational Initiatives in Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Rural development and urbanisation; Energy and resources

Project Summary

Тhe continuing growth of the tourism industry and the more impact it has the CORRIE project started with efforts to:

• Create awareness on the topic of responsible tourism, an understanding of the business opportunities it brings and how to capitalise on it individually or as a group of small entrepreneurs together. In this way, the project raises entrepreneurial skills and ‘responsible’ mindsets amongst people and communities active in tourism.
• Build high value/low volume (specialized) rather than high volume/low value (mass) tourism.
• Produce the outcome of new innovative approaches to better support competitiveness and employment in particular at regional and local level. This will result in a reduction of rural depopulation.

The consortium of the project consists of 7 organisations from different European countries. The majority of the project partners are tourism-related associations and/or business supporting organisations:
• Bulgarian Association for Alternative Tourism (BAAT) is a national NGO that unifies more than 100 members that are related to tourism. The policy of BAAT is to promote sustainable tourism and raise awareness for a sustainable travel.
• EOLAS S.L. provides services and support to all enterprises, organisations and entities with demands in the field of the design and management of projects.
• Eurocrea Merchant is a consulting and training company based in Italy.
• BDF is an international project management agency focused on supporting SMEs and schools in the field of entrepreneurship and internationalisation as well as supporting start-up companies.
• Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação is a private consulting company established as an active centre of national and international networks connected to the SME and innovation sectors.
• Canice Consulting is a small yet established private company based in Northern Ireland which operates in the fields of local and regional development, enterprise education and management and technical support to EU networks and programmes.
• Projects in Motion Ltd is a Malta-based SME focusing on promoting environmental sustainability, renewable energy sources, and energy efficient processes and products.

The main target group of the project activities were small businesses in specialized tourism from rural regions with diminishing populations and/or regions which suffer from the economic crisis. During the 36 months, all the partners organized 3 events in each country and been working actively with more than 270 stakeholders and have sent invitations and newsletters with the project activities that reached more than 1000 SMEs and entrepreneurs in Europe. The expected impact on the main target group of SMEs from rural regions active in tourism is the creation of new material that enables them to develop better entrepreneurial skills for managing a responsible business in tourism. As a result of this, they will increase their competitiveness and improve their company performance. The project will also have an impact on the local communities, the environment, the tourist and the world as they will indirectly benefit from the project results.
The expected impact on the participating organisations is that the project results enable them to enhance and widen their policies and core activities. It also generates improved knowledge and network links resulting in improved outcomes in their future projects and more collaborative organizational culture.
Trainers and other staff of tourism-related associations and consulting and business supporting organisations benefited from CORRIE as well. It is through them as intermediary target group the outputs were delivered to the final beneficiaries.

Working hard and in communication with the stakeholders the project partners delivered the following results:
– Awareness raising campaign – promotional video, website, presentation, participation in events out of the events organized during the project, etc.
– Manual – How to become responsible – with practical information for the development of responsible tourism business
– Manual – How to promote your image? – with practical information for the responsible tourism businesses that want to become more visible and well known as a responsible company
– Manual – How to set up a local network of responsible companies? – with practical information about the networking with other responsible businesses and sustainable performance
– Training kit – trainer manual to implement a training on the 4 previous results
– Online platform & community – all the manuals and training kit have been put together online as these days everyone wants to have something digital not on paper. The platform will serve as an Open Educational Resource (OER) and publish all developed IOs. This ensures that SMEs and all other interested parties can download the materials developed and legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 254434,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Balgarska asotsiatsiya za alternativen turizam & Country: BG

Project Partners

• EUROCREA MERCHANT SRL
• PROJECTS IN MOTION LIMITED
• STICHTING BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT FRIESLAND
• EOLAS S.L.
• SOCIEDADE PORTUGUESA DE INOVACAO CONSULTADORIA EMPRESARIAL E FOMENTO DA INOVACAO SA
• CANICE CONSULTING LIMITED