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Boosting Sustainable Tourism Certification

Become part of the ETGG2030 community to implement sustainable & responsible tourism

Welcome note

To promote SME sustainability and enable timely and effective knowledge transfer across the EU, the ETGG2030 project – co-funded by the COSME programme of the European Union – establishes an ICT-based sustainability knowledge acquisition, innovation, training and implementation system (ETGG2030 Going Green System) to support European tourism SMEs throughout the supply chain in their transition to sustainable consumption and production.

Please note that this website and related Going Green System are available in English. If you would like to translate this site, please use Google Translate or access the settings of your preferred browser that offers translation functions, to translate the website in Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Italian, Romanian or any other desired language. The most used browsers (Chrome, Edge or Mozilla) offer a translation function. Furthermore, you can access detailed information about the ETGG2030 Programme (SME Call documents, pilot ETGG2030 Programme application guidelines and related project information) as translated by the consortium partners and made available here.

Feel free to contact the respective consortium partner in your country, should you need to obtain additional information that you cannot find on the website.

Project summary

The European Tourism Going Green (ETGG2030) project brings together long-standing expertise from academia, chambers of commerce, tourism organisations and NGOs. With the need to make a comprehensive and long term response to the multiple crises of Global Change – including the Covid-19 health pandemic, biodiversity loss, extreme weather events and social inequality project –, the project has the overall aim to establish a long lasting, EU wide business sustainability online knowledge acquisition and expert training system that can function in the Agenda 2020-2030 policy-making decade as a service to support all European tourism SMEs willing to get certified and acknowledged as responsible businesses.

Thanks to their onboarding in the ETGG2030 Programme, the ETGG2030 project consortium strives to empower tourism SMEs to make evidence-based business decisions to implement sustainability in their operations and to improve their socio-economic and environmental performance, by demonstrating it through third-party certification.

ETGG2030
Jump on the certification train
ETGG2030
Major outcomes from January 2021 to June 2023

Our project objectives

To boost SME sustainability and enable timely and effective knowledge transfer throughout the EU, the project delivers:

  1. A consortium of 6 business networks within the 6 participating countries – an overall network of Industry associations (BSO) and TRIANGLE Knowledge Alliance Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) as a coherent European wide knowledge and innovation information sharing community to support SME sustainability implementation.
  2. Creation of an online knowledge base with best practices for the transfer of sustainability knowledge to SMEs, covering governance, environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects of doing business.
  3. Bringing 70 tourism SMEs located in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Romania into a common continuous development process that improves their knowledge acquisition, market access and promotion – as a Pilot implementation of the ETGG2030 Programme.
  4. Development of an EU wide sustainability toolkit and training service which also links to the Tourism2030.eu platform.
  5. Implementation of that service in an exemplary manner in the 6 partner countries within destinations with UNESCO cultural heritage sites and Natura 2000 sites in which SME sustainability is an immediate necessity.

ETGG2030 Going Green System

The ETGG2030 Going Green system, as developed by the ETGG2030 project consortium, represents a valuable, target-oriented, and comprehensive approach, with the main purpose to support the tourism SMEs to apply for and obtain a sustainable certification. This passes through a self-training phase and through the support of multiple stakeholders.

The ETGG2030 project brings together sustainability experts (ETGG2030 Expert Coaches), different business support organisations, higher education institutions, chambers of commerce, tourism organisations and NGOs to create a common European SME sustainability online training system with the overall aim to support SME on their Road to Certification.

The information materials and technical tools are being developed in the framework of the project to specifically assist the selected SMEs in the pilot phase of the ETGG2030 Programme. All these information materials and tools will remain accessible to new tourism SMEs wishing to apply for sustainable certification with the support of the ETGG2030 Expert Coaches and other stakeholders, upon request. The available resources will be continuously updated and are complemented by already available best practice examples to serve as an inspiration to the SMEs.

The system requirements and concept specifications of the ETGG2030 Going Green System were defined in accordance with the main purpose of guiding an SME through the entire process of "Going Green", i.e., from its onboarding to the ETGG2030 Programme to its effective certification.

The ETGG2030 project consortium is convinced to have shaped a system to boost the sustainability of European tourism SMEs and to make them more aware of the importance of sustainable tourism management and on the main assets sustainable certification is bringing for them.

Enjoy your journey!

ETGG2030
Discover the ETGG2030 Certified SMEs

Project Partners