"The project focuses on adult education and business development in the field of accessible tourism for all. Name of the project „Elevator"" represents the effort to raise the quality of human resources and services in tourism to a higher, more competitive level. Accessible tourism (Tourism for all) is an integral part of sustainable, high-quality tourism and in terms of expected trends in tourism and society also a necessary condition for maintaining its competitiveness. It is based on three important values: independence, equity and dignity. Travelling is considered as one of the fundamental rights of every individual and should be accessible for each citizen. For that to happen not only do facilities have to be accessible, but also people working in the tourism industry must be well trained and opened to the customers with access needs. It requires managers and stakeholders who are acquainted with the concept of tourism for all and motivated to deal with it. The main objective of the project is to encourage and support adult education and vocational training in accessible tourism and thereby contribute to the improvement of accessibility of tourist services and facilities for all. Project was implemented in the partnership of 4 organisations: - Kazuist (Czech Republic) - Training and consulting company in business development, accessible tourism, soft skills and entrepreneurial competences, SME- ENAT (Belgium) - European Network for Accessible Tourism, Non-profit Association, whose mission is to make European tourism destinations, products and services accessible to all travellers and to promote accessible tourism around the world. - Tandem (Italy) - Social cooperative, operator of contact centres on information and consultancy services for disability, implementer of national and international projects for the promotion of Tourism for all, surveys and accessibility assessments, providers of training on the culture of accessibility- ZAVOD PREMIKI (Slovenia) - social Enterprise, employment centre, travel agency for accessible tourism and classical tourismProject lasted 3 years during which these main activities were undertaken: 1) Project management - continuous coordination and control of project timetable, activities and budget, evaluation of project progress, publicity and dissemination activities. 2) Transnational meetings with thematic workshop on education for accessible tourism (exchange of experience and best/current practices, study visits) - 5 transnational project meetings and 4 workshops were organised. 3) Intellectual output creation and evaluation - 3 intellectual outputs were created. They are available in electronic format in 5 languages (English, Czech, Italian, Slovenian and Greek)4) Multiplier event - one transnational conference was organised. The main results of the project are 3 innovative intellectual outputs:1) Report on Accessible Tourism Training - Comparative analysis of existing tools and conditions for development of competencies for accessible tourism in partners’ countries incl. suggestion of transferable curriculum for accessible tourism training. 2) Inclusive Tourist Guiding - Open Educational Resource for Tourist Guides raising their awareness of tourists with access needs and skills for adaptation of guided tours to make them inclusive for all. 3) Accessible tourism guide - brief and comprehensible material explaining what accessible tourism is, how to support its development and what are its benefits. The potential longer term benefits are: better quality, efficiency and relevance of education for accessible tourism, higher attractiveness and interest in education for accessible tourism among training/education and tourism services providers, better access to education in accessible tourism for individual learners, professional development of tourist guides, more accessible tourist destinations and facilities, extended tourism offer and higher involvement of disabled people and seniors in travelling."

Context: The “ComPass 2016” action was an exchanges of practices “Strategic Partnerships for adult education” with the EU focus “Accessible Tourism for All”. The action has deled with the topics “Health and wellbeing” and ”Intercultural/intergenerational education and lifelong learning”, and “Mi-grants' issues”. Actual accepted is that the design and implementation of “Accessible Tourism for AlL” concepts is the primary base for the future growth of the tourism industry everywhere. An insuffi-cient awareness by tourism promoters as well as on the level of micro and small tourism enterprises is to note towards the personnel skills, qualification and competence requested by the promising “Accessible Tourism for All”. Tailor-made training and continuing education for managers and em-ployees in the tourism industry is important to enable them to cater effectively for guests with special needs and to provide high-quality tourism offers. Objectives: The action’s main objective was to ex-change specific good practices and experiences in qualification and training gained in the action mat-ter respective to the needs of micro and SMEs in the participating countries. The exchange should run on such issues like Job qualification in high-priced quality tourism regions development; Acces-sible tourism, especially for people from ethnic minorities, migrants and in opening up entrepreneur-ship opportunities, and Tourism for 3rd age. Participating organisations: Six partners from Germa-ny, Federal Land Brandenburg, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Spain, Latvia and Greece were in-volved in this action. They represented Regional Development Agencies, an NGO, a National Universi-ty, and Foundations. Activities: The project partners realised six Bench Mobility (five days each) in Burg (Spreewald/DE), Ostrava (CZ), Santander (ES), London (UK), Riga (LV) and Athens (GR). These Mobility are characterised by visits to representative regional good practices. So, the participants got see by itself on-site solutions how and which way problems were solved. The exchange of opinions, know-ledge and expertise took place most of all in direct personal contacts with these regional stakeholders. At the end, the participants could take at home in practice gained experiences to use in their own activities. All project activities were organised barrier free. Results/impact: The main project impact is summarised in the following statement: “It makes business sense as well as being a moral imperative to think about what can be done to provide a better service for people with a disability. From that perspective it was heartening to know that people are thinking about these issues and the project was an opportunity I think to raise awareness about those initiatives and provide the basis for future discussion.” (Jeremy Barker (UK). Project participant who sees things through the prism of his own direct experience with disability). In total 119 direct beneficiaries and 142 indirect beneficiaries have actively participated in the six Bench Mobility. The project has reached by communication activi-ties like newsletters (subscribers), web sites (visitors), press statements, social median (Facebook, Twitter followers) etc. approximately 6.000 interested persons. The evaluation shows that the main lessons learned are, that in every partner country micro and tourism SMEs have the same difficulties to acquire skilled personnel; the migration workforce in this sector is essential; the micro and SME´s need to be trained to accept and professionally integrate migrant’s workforce and that this workforce needs to be proper trained; that the sector must be open to capitalise from other Human Resources as people with disabilities and be flexible and cooperative in the training process. All results are downloaded in the ERASMUS+ Results Platform. There are different impact levels to note. The direct involved stakeholders got most of all a better and enlarged expertise how the same problems are solved in different European countries especially about how to develop person-oriented service competences and make tourism facilities and services more accessible, by one hand, and practical intercultural, social and civic competences and behaviours by the other. “Mobility within the project were very beneficial for my work in the regional destination company, mainly in terms of practical demonstrations of accessible tourism in Spain and in Latvia.” (Lucie for CZ). The participating organi-sations got a deeper inside and raised expertise in the matter of “Accessible Tourism for All”. Longer-term benefits: The shared good practices on wide aspects in “Accessible Tourism for All” will be in-tegrated into the regional educational systems and in the daily entrepreneurial practise. The enhanced European and Transnational networking of partners created will continue after EU funding and proba-bly lead to other common European projects in this or other issues of common interest.