Organisational Diagnosis and B-Learning Tool for Enhancement of the Wine TourismSME Erasmus Project

Project Title

Organisational Diagnosis and B-Learning Tool for Enhancement of the Wine TourismSME

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 2016

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Despite annual tourism statistics highlighting an increasing number of visitors to wineries in Europe, wine tourism training is rare. Indeed, to date, only two universities offer training in the wine tourism sector namely, Universidade Lusófona in Portugal and Universidad de Salamanca in Spain.

It is in this context that six European organizations from research and trade sectors worked together for 31 months (September 2016 – March 2019) in order to create the “BACCHUS SME” vocational training in tourism. Thus, the partnership included a cooperative that supports and promotes sustainable rural development, economic, social, professional and employment (FR); three SMEs (PT, AT, BG) active in the fields of vocational training, adult training and human resources consultancy; a university (ES) covering scientific fields and know-how related to tourism and organizational development and having interdisciplinary research experience; and a local development agency (IT) that supports and promotes sustainable rural, economic, social, vocational and employment development, and operates in particular in the areas of rural tourism, environmental education, rural development and tourism. innovation, technology transfer and vocational training.

BACCHUS SME project was divided into four phases: analysis of the organizational development of SMEs (O1); analysis of the wine tourism sector (O2); development of the learning program and the diagnostic tool (O3) and creation of the BACCHUS SME platform (O4).

Thus, the partners first conducted two studies (O1 and O2) on their territory in order to identify the specific needs of small and medium-sized winegrowers for their organizational development and for a diversification of their wine tourism offer. To do this, the partners have worked with both wine entrepreneurs, wine tourists but also public bodies, local development associations, experts in wine tourism, etc. to which they submitted questionnaires. Focus groups and literature searches complemented the field studies. In total, nearly 500 people contributed to the work.

Based on the results of their studies, the partners created an innovative learning program (O3) including a diagnostic tool and blended-learning training modules (combination of online training sequences and face-to-face training). Thus, in view of the identified needs, the partners of BACCHUS project developed the following modules: (1) wine tourism as an opportunity for the wine industry; (2) good practices for innovation and entrepreneurship strategy in wine tourism; (3) analysis of local and global tourism attractions; (4) English language in the wine tourism sector; (5) communication and cooperation techniques; (6) marketing in the wine tourism sector; (7) ICTs applied to wine tourism and digital marketing; (8) wine and heritage and (9) food and wine pairings. All content is embedded in the online platform BACCHUS SME (O4) developed specifically for the project needs.

In addition to the communication actions carried out on digital tools and in the press, the intellectual outputs of BACCHUS SME project were presented during multiplier events (E3-E10) organized as part of the project. The latter brought together nearly 300 people from the six territories of the partnership (AT, BG, ES, FR, IT and PT) who had he opportunity to share their opinion and even test the developed content and tools.

For more information on the project and its results, please consult free available BACCHUS SME tools and content from the project website: www.bacchus-sme.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 341300,62 Eur

Project Coordinator

CDE Petra Patrimonia & Country: FR

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA
• Aidlearn, Consultoria em Recursos Humanos Lda.
• DAKOM
• Molise verso il 2000 scrl
• Multidisziplinäres Institut für Europa-Forschung Graz