<< Background >>Hospitality (accommodation/ food & beverage businesses) is in a deep crisis as a result of temporary and permanent closures and loss of its customer base linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. Together with tourism, the hospitality sector is the 3rd largest socio-economic activity in the EU. The industry is also central to the European recovery and as such needs to contribute to building smart (digital, sustainable) ecosystems for all tourism stakeholders which offer travellers more memorable and sustainable experiences through for example longer or off-season stays (European Tourism Convention 2020). Travellers, tourism businesses (90% of which are SMEs or microbusinesses) as well as destinations all need to be supported in working towards a sustainable tourism recovery.The future of tourism is green, digital and inclusive. The hospitality sector plays an important role in social inclusion, offering the first job experience for many young people. It also offers jobs to relatively unskilled people, as 30,2% have a lower secondary education or under, compared to 17,7% in the overall economy (EUROSTAT).The project considers the Council Recommendations on VET and the New European Skills Agenda as well as the Osnabrück Declaration (2020) and will as such be working towards all four priorities of the declaration:1. Resilience and excellence through quality, inclusive and flexible VET2. Establishing a new lifelong learning culture – relevance of CVET and digitalisation3. Sustainability – a green link in VET4. European Education and Training Area and international VETThis will be achieved through - A broad range of project activities, bringing together stakeholders from across sectors linked to the hospitality and tourism ecosystem, especially by encouraging lifelong learning and linking VET education and business leading to boosting the resilience and sustainability of SMEs and CVET provision. - The creation of results and materials such as the collection of practices, the development of a high quality training programme, adequate exploitation materials and the creation of a sustainable SME network to boost international collaboration and exchanges. - Answering to the recently published European Commission Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027) by offering inclusive and accessible digital education through high-quality learning resources.Identified NEEDS:Need for an open source, flexible and easily accessible online training and OERs for SMEs who are chronically lacking financial resources and local access to upskill staff (EC 2018).Addressing inclusivity by offering an attractive training opportunity for hospitality sector workers: the tourism industry gives more opportunities to low educated workers. Focusing on sustainability; the project will offer support to overcome the current crisis, build resilience/develop more sustainable and profitable practices for the future in line with the European SME strategy 2020 and focus on the EU post-Covid recovery.Offering academic staff/educators access to resources to support their students by rooting sustainable practices and entrepreneurship throughout their learning journey. Participation in entrepreneurship education increases the likelihood of engaging in entrepreneurial activities later in life by 35% on average (European Training Monitor 2019). Supporting/strengthening the links between SMEs & VET/HE/Adult education providers in line with the EC focus to boost innovation through education-business cooperation.Raising awareness of sustainability challenges/current & future skills needs of SMEs to encourage adequate educational provision, inform/support SMEs & alert policy makers.Supporting the hospitality and tourism ecosystem/local communities by developing sustainable tourism that benefits people, business and the environment.Providing new practical examples and recommendations for public authorities and policy makers to support decision making.<< Objectives >>OVERALL OBJECTIVES: - Raising awareness of the advantages of sustainable business management & green skills for business, society/community & the environment. - Supporting SMEs in their green transition by upskilling/reskilling staff and encouraging sustainable entrepreneurship & practices. - Contributing behavioural change and understanding that sustainability is not a nice to have by-product but can be integrated across all aspects of business operations. - Developing business sustainability competences of academics & educators. - Offering a new flexible open-source training opportunity for hospitality managers/ workers to upskill and meet new labour market needs future demands of employers & businesses. - Offering an opportunity for adult professionals to gain relevant green business skills to upskill, reskill, increase their employability, or reinvent their “green” business & access a changing labour market in the hospitality sector. - Supporting hospitality/tourism schools with expanding their CVET training offer for SMEs & hospitality professionals. - Expanding the offer of relevant resources & training materials available to academic/educators to support changing skills needs. - Supporting the adaptation of existing training offers/programmes to recent developments in the industry by providing new highly relevant content. - Supporting the integration of (business) sustainability into hospitality curricula.CONCRETE OBJECTIVES - Produce a comprehensive report about the post-Covid 19 sustainability challenges and skills needs of hospitality SME staff (PR1) to inform all subsequent project activities.Offering a comprehensive set of transferable good practices to be integrated into the training programme or consulted separately in order to make more informed and sustainable business decisions and strengthen resilience. (PR2)- Develop an attractive and multilingual training programme and hands-on practical easy to use learning resources/toolbox for SME staff, academics/educators that will lead to the uptake of sustainable practices that benefit businesses and their local ecosystem, the community as well as the environment. (PR3) - Demonstrate and raise awareness about how sustainability benefits local businesses and their staff, the community, immediate environment (through all training materials, events, guidelines and policy recommendations). (PR1, 2, 3 & 4) - Target hospitality and tourism schools, SMEs, sector representations, public authorities, policy makers as well as other players part of the local and regional tourism ecosystem through dissemination and exploitation materials to encourage the uptake of sustainable practices in hospitality businesses. (PR5) - Create and animate a network community of sustainable hospitality businesses across the partner countries which can be rolled out across Europe and lives on after the end of the project (PR 5).<< Implementation >>MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIESDescribed in a Project Management Plan, which includes, among others, partner meetings incl online and other communication actions to promote the creation of synergies, the cooperation/exchange of good practices among partners active in the project area; transnational meetings, scheduled to contribute to smooth progress; other pre-established communication actions. This Project Management Plan will not only guarantee that the project is carried out as planned but also enhances understanding among the partners and the products/results tailored to the real needs of the target groups.QUALITY ASSURANCE ACTIVITIESAs a core framework of the quality assessment, there will be similar steps followed in each activity: research/needs analysis, design/development, implementation, evaluation/assessment and lessons learnt, revision and, finally, exploitation of the results and sustainability. These processes (see the Quality Assessment section) will contribute to a better quality of the products/results and, thus to a more successful achievement of the goals.DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIESThey will directly contribute to the spread of the information about project activities/results as well as raise awareness about the crucial role of sustainability for SMEs and business. Besides, the fact that all partners will collaborate to carry them out, will contribute to the improvement of transnational cooperation of partners working within the hospitality ecosystem.CONSULTATION REPORTThe consultation about the post-Covid 19 sustainability challenges and skills needs of hospitality SME staff will inform all subsequent project activities and project results and will hence be essential to reaching the project objectives at all levels (regional/national through country analysis and at European level through consolidated analysis).METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK & COLLECTION OF PRACTICES Innovative practices linked to sustainable business management from the partner countries will be used as case studies to enrich the training programme but will also be available as a stand alone tool to offer maximum flexibility to the user and target group. Practices will offer practical examples for SMEs to work on becoming more sustainable in very different business areas such as for example value chains, communication or partnerships.COMPETENCE FRAMEWORK AND CURRICULUMThe mapping of competences to be acquired and the establishment of the competence framework are essential for the development of the lesson plan/the detailed and attractive/highly relevant curriculum for the 6 module training programme.DEVELOPMENT OF TRAINING PROGRAMME, WEBSITE/TOOLBOXHighly attractive website and OER will all project materials/results will be easy to navigate and use, also respecting the needs of those with limited digital skills. The high quality digital and open source training programme will be available in partner languages to provide an interactive learning experience for those who are maybe not regularly engaging in continuous education and lifelong learning activities. The programme and Toolbox will lead to the uptake of sustainable practices that benefit businesses and their local ecosystem, the community as well as the environment.TOOLKIT FOR CHANGEGuidelines and policy recommendations and a comprehensive campaign at the final stage will target various audiences - academics & educators, SME staff, adult learners through adult education providers job centres, public authorities, policy-makers - and will raise awareness about the role of sustainability in business management and the need for uptake of sustainable practices. The EcoSME network will serve as a hands-on tool to test the exchange of practices of SMEs and encourage collaboration to bring about sustainable change, lasting impact and a shift towards a sustainable business mindset.<< Results >>The project has been developed in a way to ensure that a maximum of results can be disseminated and exploited by its target audiences in the long term.REPORT FROM CONSULTATIONThe country reports & analytical report does not only serve as a basis for all subsequent project results but can also be disseminated to local/regional/national policy makers/VET schools/sector associations in order to highlight the importance to invest in CVET and particularly in the area of sustainability to strengthen the sector.The CATALOGUE OF PRACTICES to which all partners will contribute, forms another central part of the project. It will provide practical examples in order to illustrate the content of the training but can also be accessed/consulted/used independently without taking part in the training or modules. It will be searchable with tags and links and updated along the project life time as well as beyond when new examples emerge.COMPETENCE FRAMEWORK AND CURRICULUM for SME owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in the hospitality sector comprising both accommodation & restaurant businesses in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which has put new pressure on SMEs to adapt and survive under very challenging circumstances. New expectations are being put on businesses to comply with demands in the area of sustainability. Green skills will be essential for businesses to remain financially sustainable. The ONLINE TRAINING & TOOLBOX will offer 6 modules linked to key areas of sustainability, from understanding the concept to implementing it in a way that it favours both the business and the three dimensions of sustainability (society, environment & economy) in the hospitality sector. Although participants/users of the training programme are encouraged to take the whole course, they can also choose to only work through individual modules. The course can be used as a blended or stand alone online course.GUIDELINES FOR EDUCATORS & POLICY RECOMMENDATIONSThe project will develop guidelines for academics/educators in order for them to see where the main gaps and needs of SMEs are, to understand trends in the industry etc. and how to best benefit from the training programme/materials. The guidelines will help them to anticipate future skills needs and guide their students in the right direction. The project will produce policy recommendations to be sent to policy makers together with the consultation report. The policy recommendations will be based on all the work carried out during the project (consultation, case studies, reports from the regional pilots and fora, feedback from partners and stakeholders etc.). The WEBSITE containing training/toolbox & VIRTUAL NETWORK SPACE will be the shop window of the project and will be flawlessly and professionally designed to ensure that participants stay engaged and enjoy the learning experience. The website will include all relevant information about the project and its results destined to its different target audiences to be explained further on.All partners have very good and regular contacts with SMEs and where SMEs have struggled because of the crisis, partners are also looking at developing new networks/relationships in the sector within regional ecosystems but also internationally. The project aims to initiate a NETWORK OF SMEs working on sustainability that can serve as a pool for knowledge exchange across regions. The network will initially comprise SMEs from the partner countries but will be rolled out to other regions as a tool to establish and encourage sustainable hospitality business practices.PILOTS AND MULTIPLIER EVENTS will be held in 4 partner countries bringing together project target audiences to test and subsequently improve project results upon their recommendations as well as to inform and raise awareness about project results.WORKING DOCUMENTS: Dissemination & Exploitation Strategy, Evaluation Plan, Visual Identity, Templates and Charts, Sustainability Plan.