Innoguide 2.0. ‘Guiding as a trigger for a more sustainable, diverse and exciting Europe! Stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of guiding.’ Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innoguide 2.0. ‘Guiding as a trigger for a more sustainable, diverse and exciting Europe! Stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of guiding.’

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In an ever globalising world, guides are increasingly being faced with intercultural, sustainable and unique experience demands from tour participants, as different research studies have already shown. To address these requests a guide is challenged to continuously self-improve and to think of lifelong learning as an opportunity rather than a burden. A first European project, called Innoguide, addressed this particular need for more intercultural, sustainable and experiential competences for guides and developed an online platform for guide trainers with teaching materials on these topics. These materials can be consulted at: http://learning.viaviatourismacademy.com/innoguide/. Based on feedback from users it became clear, however, that a follow-up initiative was needed to further develop the online platform, but more importantly also to provide more hands-on training to gain more skills and in-depth knowledge on these topics (interculturality, sustainability and experiential guiding). The first goal of this Innoguide 2.0 project was thus to contribute to a further improvement of the quality of guide training in Europe.

A second objective of this project was to offer extra support and expertise to guide organisations to manage a profitable, customer-oriented and qualitative organisation, in short to stimulate their entrepreneurial skills. To provide this support this project used the principles of service design thinking and innovation. This approach resulted in, based on a co-creation method, the development of different supporting instruments guide organisations can use to strengthen the management of their organisation and particularly the quality of their customer service. In a first phase, together with the help of stakeholders, different persona’s were created that reflect the different types of guides or guide managers (general role) you can be. Based on these persona’s a short self-assessment (in the form of a quiz) was developed as a tool for organisations to gain more grip on their guides’ profiles. It helps them to think what type of guides best fit their company profile and how employees in guide organisations should/could be trained. The other developed instruments (customer journey and testimonials) help guide organisations to gain customer feedback and to address weaker points in their customer service which ultimately benefits the tourist who wants to make use of the services of the organisation.

In summary this project has the following two overall project objectives:

• To further improve guide training by:
– Updating and refining the teaching materials on the current Innoguide e-learning platform (moodle)
– Putting together and organising six different train-the-trainer workshops on the 3 Innoguide topics that promote the importance of sustainability, interculturality and experiential guiding as key competences for guides in Europe
– Upgrading the current moodle and the project website (www.innoguidetourism.eu) to more dynamic and interactive online platforms where different stakeholders (guides, guide trainers, guide organisations) can find best practices and materials that inspire them to innovate the work field of guides and guide organisations.

• To stimulate and develop the entrepreneurial and customer service qualities of guide organisations by:
– Developing an “Innoguide self-scan” based for guide organisations, based on personas. This self-scan, in the form of a playful quiz, gives guides and guide organisations a sense of who they are as guides and it helps guide organisations to think of what type of guides best fit their company profile.
– Developing supporting service design based instruments that help the organisations improve their service quality

For this project a diverse partner consortium was involved, each bringing their own expertise to the table. More specifically Toerisme Vlaanderen (Belgium), ViaVia Tourism Academy (Belgium), NHTV (The Netherlands), Service&CO (Denmark), Erhvervsakademi Dania (Denmark), Laurea (Finland) and Drustvo Marije Juric Zagorke (Croatia) have engaged themselves to invest in this project.

This project has affected all the stakeholders directly involved in the field of guiding, namely guides, guide trainers, guide organisations and indirectly the tourists. By stressing the importance of a good service quality, it promoted and integrated a more customer and service-oriented perspective in guide organisations and it contributed to the further professionalisation in the field of guiding by highlighting and teaching the importance of several key competences for guides. This project contributed to the ambition of developing more sustainable, responsible, innovative and high-quality guided tours around Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 267367,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

TOERISME VLAANDEREN & Country: BE

Project Partners

• STICHTING NHTV INTERNATIONALE HOGESCHOOL BREDA
• ERHVERVSAKADEMI DANIA
• LIVING STONE DIALOOG, VIAVIA TOURISM ACADEMY
• Service & Co. A/S
• LAUREA-AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• Drustvo Marije Juric Zagorke