Apply today
Get support, coaching, mentoring and guidance
The Tourism4.0 project aims at developing a capacity building, technology transfer, support, and assistance program to enable tourism sector SMEs to adopt and leverage emerging digital technologies, to improve their productivity, sustainability, and overall business performance.
Supported by open innovation and challenging initiative, Tourism4.0 brings a valuable opportunity for co-design and joint collaboration between “problem owners” and “problem solvers”.
Tourism4.0 will provide support, coaching, mentoring, and guidance towards adopting solutions offered by experts and enabling organizations that will facilitate and build capacity via training, webinars and peer learning activities.

Program activities
1. Mentoring
How does it work?
Beneficiaries will select a TOURISM4.0 mentor from a pre- established pool of mentor profiles, who will provide expert knowledge in the specific area of focus of the initiative, working with each SME (or partnership of SMEs) offering tailor-made coaching, training, and skills development to elevate the team capabilities and advise projects to achieve increased success.

Benefits of participating in the mentoring plan:
- improved business experience
- assistance in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the SMEs/Start-ups
- assistance in making informed decisions about issues that the team has doubts about
- opportunity to discuss strategic issues & receive advice from an experienced specialist
- increase of contacts
- new ideas, and knowledge
- moral support and encouragement
- cooperation with the coach will continue after the end of the program

2. Online webinars and workshops
Beneficiaries will be invited to participate in 15 webinars (max. 50 minutes each) and 6 online workshops on the following pillar-topics:
Pillar #1: Technology and solutions towards productivity and efficiency
Pillar #2: Digital sustainability and low carbon solutions
Pillar #3: Resilience: safety and compliance-guidance solutions.
To receive funding, mandatory participation in at least 5 webinars / workshops is required.
3. Pills of knowledge
Beneficiaries will be invited to participate in online learning sessions (max. 20 minutes) always available online on the TOURISM4.0 YouTube channel / video podcast on the following subjects:
1.
Challenges and opportunities of the tourism industry’s digital transformation
2.
Digitalization as the driver of growth for tourism businesses
3.
Use of digital techonologies for SMEs operating in the tourism industry
4.
Presentation of good practices for boosting the innovation capacity of tourism enterpreneurs
5.
Integration of the tourism SMEs in the global digital value chain
6.
Digital solutions to find new business opportunities in the tourism sector
The pills will be accompanied by infographics relating to:
- improve customer experience
- develop digitalization sustainability tools
- obtain and maintain quality of service parameters/improve automate operations
- improve booking and revenue management
- improve communication and digital marketing with customers
In order to achieve funding, beneficiaries must follow at least 3 Pills of Knowledge.
4. Networking, peer-learning activities and best solutions exhibition
Beneficiaries will be invited to join the Tourism4.0 Final Conference, which will be held in Portugal in late 2023. It is foreseen that the Final Conference will host a networking event between beneficiaries, peer-learning activities and an exhibition of the best solutions/cases.
This event will increase the visibility and positioning of the participating SMEs. Any travel costs for participation in the event can be covered by the financial support granted.

5. Financial support for investments in digitalization and innovation
Beneficiaries can also plan and receive a financial contribution for activities (e.g., training, consultancy or other services) related to one or more of the following topics:
Improve communication and digital marketing
Develop digitalization/environmental sustainability tools
Obtain and maintain quality of service parameters
Improve automate operations
Improve booking
Improve customer experience
How will costs be covered?
Your SME will receive an advance payment of 50% of the value of the total voucher, while the remaining part will be refunded after the verification of the results of program implementation.
To this end, you will be asked to fill in a simple template that will be provided, describing the impact of the digitization or innovation process that you have decided to carry out in your organization and explaining how the voucher was used.
Each beneficiary SME will receive financial support in terms of a Voucher valued at a maximum of 7,000 euros.
The voucher represents the maximum amount and therefore the financial support your SME might receive could be less if incurred costs at the end of the program are below these caps.
Eligible costs
1. Travel, registration and accommodation costs allow active participation of tourism SMEs in the training and support activities designed and established within the TOURISM4.0 program particular thematic workshops, one-to-one and peer group mentoring and coaching sessions, pitching and networking sessions, technology partnership matchmaking, and the final conference.
2. Digital innovation and smart tourism investments, comprising technology uptake facilitation and co-development with digital start-ups/SMEs related to smart tourism, innovation/digital advisory, and digital transformation advisory.
This may include:
- requirements and innovation/digitalization need analysis
- business process and operationalization analysis
- technical, business, and financial feasibility assessment
- standardization, compliance, and legal analysis
- digital skills improvement and upgrade assessment product adaptation
- technology adoption and technology/knowledge transfer
- product trial awareness
- small proof of concept, prototyping, testing, and piloting activities carried out within the project
Training program lasts 9 months.
Who can apply?
To be eligible for the Tourism4.0 program your company must comply with all of the following requirements
a
Be a small or medium enterprise (SME), as defined by the EU recommendataion 2003/3611
Company category
Staff head counter
Turnover
Or
Balance sheet total
Medium-sized
<250
≤€50m
≤€43m
Small
<50
≤€10m
≤€10m
micro
<10
≤€10m
≤€2m
b
Be a tourism SME from one of the following categories of the tourism industry:
- Hotels and similar accommodation (NACE 55.1)
- Holiday and other short-stay accommodation (NACE 55.2)
- Camping grounds, recreational vehicle parks, and trailer parks (NACE I5530)
- Travel agencies, tour operator reservation services, and related activities (NACE 79)
c
Be located in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Malta, or Croatia
What is expected from participating SMEs?
- Your active participation in the program’s activities.
- Report that will allow us to monitor your digitalization performance and results. We will provide you with a simple template to be filled out.
- Allow us to access and use your path/experience, and publicly disseminate the results.
- Provide us with basic information about your company such as logo, description, and contact information to publicly disseminate on our website and thus facilitate potential matchmaking between your company, other tourism service providers.
- Keep and send invoices and payment statements of the costs you incur in during our program.
- Your commitment to improving your SME’s digital performance
- Give visibility to the Tourism4.0 project and of EU funding while participating in the program. We
will provide you with a standard sticker showcasing the project’s logo and EU emblem and disclaimer
to be visibly placed in your establishment (window, counter, etc.). Indications for dissemination on social media will also be provided (hashtags, keywords, etc.).
How to apply?
Before getting started, please note that we will only accept applications submitted in English. Then, follow these steps to successfully submit your application:
1. Click on the “Apply now” button
2. Fill out all sections of the application form. If you wish to consult it beforehand, a template of the form’s structure is available in Annex I.
3. Accept the privacy policy and declaration of honour at the end of the form.
4. Click on “Submit”.
The deadline for application is on 18 January 2023 at 17:00 CET.
The evaluation process of applications will take approximately 4 weeks. You can read more about evaluation process on following link: Evaluation process.
For more information on this call and the Tourism4.0 project, please contact us via e-mail to info@tourism4-0.eu.