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Get to know our ETGG2030 activities, our organised gatherings and find out more about all potential synergies in your sector (find counterparts and peers, be promoted, enlarge your network)
The national networking & training workshops are fundamental building blocks of the ETGG2030 project activities and of the ETGG2030 Going Green System in general. They bring together SMEs, expert coaches, pilot destinations and other relevant sustainability stakeholders from the tourism industry, such as sustainable certification operators, business support organisations, Higher Education Institutions’ (HEIs) representatives and of course the ETGG2030 national consortium partners.
The main purpose of the workshops is to support tourism SMEs on their road to sustainable certification by different means and to bring to them as much facilitation as possible throughout the process, to provide the necessary guidance and to disseminate their achievements upon their successful and effective certification.
Workshops are held in each of the respective project countries and encompass various topics of interests, international good practice examples of already certified SMEs and their main achievements are being presented, a baseline assessment of the SMEs’ readiness to apply for certification is being done and a certification action plan is being drawn up.
At the workshops SMEs meet, have the opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge, and to address common issues to be tackled. During the pilot implementation of the ETGG2030 Programme three workshops in total have been held in the project partner countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Romania.
The "Green Tourism Conference" (held on 3rd and 4th May 2023 in Vienna, Austria with more than 250 international participants from the European tourism sector) was the final event of the ETGG2030 project. Via our livestream we were also able to welcome participants from all over the world, such as Greece or India. This clearly shows that the interest in sustainable tourism is growing and will continue to gain importance.
One of the project goals is an international exchange of experience and communication on a European level. Through the conference an optimal opportunity for networking has been created. Another way of connecting has been used a lot, the LinkedIn profile for the ETGG 2030 project as well as the #etgg2030 for every shared post on other social media.
At the Green Tourism Conference there were many interesting presentations and keynote speeches, for example by Andreea Staicu, Stefan Gössling, Ivana Budin Arhanic or Kristof Tomej. The videos of these recorded presentations can be re-watched on the ÖHV YouTube channel at any time, as they represent an added value for businesses and other tourism stakeholders. The conference programme, together with the presentations themselves are available on the Green Tourism Conference page on the website of the organiser – the Austrian Hotelier Association).
The participants from the 6 participating project partner countries Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Romania have used the chance to network, especially at the evening dinner, to connect and share knowledge. The 70 SMEs, that are participating in the ETGG2030 project, have presented their national achievements. But there have also been border-crossing cooperations and innovative ideas presented as Best-Practice examples, especially when talking about mobility.
The conference was held as a Green Meeting, additionally only vegetarian and vegan catering was served during the conference, which was very innovative. This was accepted with enthusiasm by the participants. The evening dinner took place in the world`s largest organic restaurant, the Luftburg by Kolarik in Vienna’s famous Prater, close to the city centre.
Learn more about the Green Tourism Conference by accessing our Austrian partner’s website
The TRIANGLE Knowledge Alliance (KA) is a European network of universities in the field of sustainable tourism. The main aims of the Alliance are the exchange of knowledge, the execution of joint research projects and the joint development of educational programmes as well as the dissemination and transfer of this knowledge into the tourism industry via partnerships with business support organisations (BSOs), destination management organisations and individual companies, often with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
In the framework of the ETGG2030 project the TRIANGLE KA affiliates contributed 20 national chapters to the European Tourism SME Going Green 2030 report, which is a valuable resource that can be downloaded from the Resources section of our website. Some of the TRIANGLE KA affiliates will also gather in Eberswalde, Germany during a joint summer school on EU sustainable tourism policies and funding programmes, foreseen in June 2023.
Learn more about the TRIANCLE KA affiliates and their involvement in the ETGG2030 project
From June 19-23, 2023, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development organised an international summer school on the topic of “Sustainable Tourism Policies – Strategies in the European Union”. 26 students and lecturers from nine TRIANGLE universities from Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden participated. The summer school covered a wide range of topics from general EU policies on sustainable development and the EU “Transition Pathway for Tourism” to national tourism strategies and concrete funding programmes for tourism destinations, attractions and SMEs. A field trip in the State of Brandenburg showcased a variety of hands-on projects that had used EU funds, among others, for their implementation. Finally, multinational student teams were asked to conceive transborder tourism projects that would fit EU sustainability goals as their examination assignment. Apart from the training of students as future destination and tourism company managers, the summer school was an important forum for university lecturers to exchange their knowledge and experiences when connecting academic research to the “real world” of tourism SMEs and stakeholder networks in their respective countries.
The Travel Green Europe mapping system on Tourism2030.eu is an external tool for dissemination and marketing of the tourism SMEs once certified. It also brings together, HEI networks, BSOs, pilot destinations and other relevant sustainable tourism stakeholders.
The mapping features on the Tourism2030.eu platform offer certified SMEs the opportunity to access and be promoted on the platform’s European Sustainability Marketplace. Once an SME has successfully completed the third-party certification, it will appear with its references in the Travel Green Europe mapping pages. This offers a destination/region/country the opportunity to map their SMEs along with other third-party certified businesses so they can begin to participate in green supply chains and partner with other businesses that have also been certified by a third party. Presence in the Tourism2030.eu Sustainability Marketplace provides participating companies with greater market exposure and access to customers interested in greener businesses.
The Travel Green Europe Maps pages on the Tourism 2030 platform, administered by the project partner ECOTRANS – a long-standing mapping services provider – will serve as the main mapping marketplace for the successfully certified tourism SMEs in the framework of the ETGG2030 Programme.
Learn more about the the Green Travel Maps here
The ETGG2030 Project has been co-funded by the European Union’s COSME programme as part of a launched call for proposals “Boosting sustainable tourism development and capacity of tourism SMEs through transnational cooperation and knowledge transfer” (COS-TOURCOOP-2019-3-01), with the overall aim (1) to reinforce transnational and cross-border cooperation to enable sustainable growth of tourism SMEs, (2) to cultivate SMEs’ capacities and skills for solutions for more sustainable management and tourism sustainability in general, and (3) to encourage innovative solutions for sustainable tourism through cross-sectoral cooperation.
In terms of numbers, 6 TOURCOOP projects have been funded and consequently 52 partner organisations could start to work collaboratively and in parallel in 18 European countries in total (16 EU countries and 2 non-EU countries). Many COSME TOURCOOP project stakeholders have been working together to make tourism more sustainable, to further support the development of third-party sustainability certification for SMEs, and to contribute to the EU Green Transition.
The ETGG2030 project has established a network clustering process to achieve the most cost-effective and efficient means of sharing and mainstreaming data, information and knowledge about sustainability certification at the transboundary level across Europe. The purpose of this special European TOURCOOP cluster is to establish synergies between the TOURCOOP funded projects, to promote their tools, to support SMEs working toward certification, and to give access to all project’s networks to help collaborative business support services, including valuable resources and promotion tools, such as the Green Travel Maps used as a common mapping system.
These individual projects and their valuable resources can be explored on the project’s respective websites, as follows:
CEnTOUR - https://circulartourism.eu/
EU ECO-TANDEM - https://www.eu-ecotandem.eu/
SUSTOUR – https://www.ectaa.org/en/sustour-project
Tourban - https://www.tourban.eu/
TOURISME - https://tourisme-project.eu/
ETGG2030 – https://etgg2030.com (current website)
Additionally, all six projects have been also mapped on a dedicated TOURCOOP cluster mapping page set up on Tourism2030.eu (Please note that you will be redirected to an external page and website, administered by the ETGG2030 project partner ECOTRANS).
The content of this website represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.
