Digital Training and Education on Responsible Tourism Initiatives Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital Training and Education on Responsible Tourism Initiatives

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Although the negative impact of Covid-19 on the tourism industry, it remains one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economic sectors. There is a growing trend and a raising consumer awareness for sustainable and responsible tourism. The consortium of the project consists of 3 organizations from 3 different European countries. The majority of the project partners are tourism related associations and/or business supporting organizations.

DTeReTi project aims to:
• 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’ mind-sets amongst people and communities active in tourism.
• To foster and stimulate high value/low volume (specialized) rather than high volume/low value (mass) tourism.
• To develop innovative training approaches to better support competitiveness and employment in particular at regional and local level.

The main target group are small businesses, individual entrepreneurs in specialized tourism, family houses, small municipalities, incl. rural municipalities. This target group include the end-users and can directly benefit from the project results that will be developed in this project. Trainers and other staff of tourism-related associations, consulting and business supporting organizations will benefit from DTeReTi as well. It is through them as intermediary target group the outputs will be delivered to the final beneficiaries. A special IO will be created to support trainers. This will ensure a complete and integrated set of materials and support tools.

TEReTI addresses the horizontal priority (Innovative practices in a digital era) with development of an interactive set of training materials (TEReTI Compendium) that enables both trainees and educators to develop applied knowledge and skills which are transferable and applicable in different context, especially to implement responsible tourism initiatives successfully in their organizations. With DTeReTi Compendium and DTeReTi bResponsible Simulator SMEs active in specialized tourism get the opportunity to develop basic and transversal skills as: entrepreneurship, social awareness and involvement, digital skills and language competences. In the development of the Intellectual Outputs (IOs) an innovative learner-centred pedagogical approaches will be used. The material to be developed includes structures in terms of objectives, content and assessments. However, DTeReTi Compendium will be developed in a way that is attractive for the target group. All partners in the consortium have been working with SMEs for many years and therefore know how to address it. The project focuses on the application of these skills and knowledge to individuals and businesses in tourism.

The expected impact on the main TG of SMEs active in tourism is the improvement of the level of entrepreneurial skills and development an responsible mind set because they will learn how to increase their competitiveness and improve their company performance by means of the application of an innovative strategy: responsible tourism. They will develop transversal skills in social awareness and involvement in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility. 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 project promotes learning through Open Educational Resource (OER) as the learning materials are available on DTeReTi bResponsible Simulator free of charge. By using the simulator the TG will improve its digital skills.

The expected impact on the participating organisations is that the project results enables 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. The expected impact on other relevant stakeholders (governance, CoC, etc.) is to better serve and support their target group with access to the materials in 3 different languages.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Responsible Brand Image remain a subject of high value and to incorporate it into SMEs’ long term strategy, the EU platform will prove to be a very useful resource on the long run. 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. On DTeReTi bResponsible Simulator will be created a community in which responsible companies/regions from different countries can interact, communicate and learn from each other. This will result in reciprocal learning to increase the language and digital competences among learners.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 196434 Eur

Project Coordinator

European Strategic Partnerships Ltd. & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Euroform RFS
• NGO “Check Point Sofia”