Tourbit
Digitalisation has the potential to boost innovation, to generate economic and environmental efficiencies and increase productivity. At the same time, it brings unprecedented opportunities for tourism SMEs such as the development of new products and services, processes, access to new markets and improved customer experience. The European project TOURBIT (‘Fostering digitalisation of European tourism SMEs’) understands that digitalisation opens opportunities but, like other global forces of the industry, poses many challenges to tourism SMEs. In that sense, its main objective is fostering skills and capacity and boosting the uptake of digitalisation and innovation , promoting resilient and competitive SMEs and spurring a faster transformation of the European tourism sector.
Title:
TOURBIT - Fostering digitalisation of European Tourism SMEs
Co-financed by:
COSME programme of the European Union
Start – end:
January 2022 - June 2024
Value:
1,3M EUR
about
the project
TOURBIT partnership proposes a transnational and cross-ecosystem support-service scheme based on a framework of three pillars ‘Learning, Building, Testing and Implementing’ which goal is to enable tourism SMEs to cultivate their necessary capabilities to thrive in the digital age.
New and innovative digital technologies for the tourism industry will be mapped including the following 7 trending technology solutions: Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Tourism SMEs will start their journey of digital transformation with the ‘Digital Readiness Index’, a self-assessment tool build on Arctur's AAT and offered online through the TOURBIT platform, followed by a complete programme of webinars to LEARN more about technology tools and innovative solutions. Connexion, knowledge and collaboration between tourism SMEs and key ecosystem players, especially start ups, will be encouraged through an online community on Tourism Innovation. Co-creating workshops and a virtual hackaton with the participation of stakeholders across Europe will complete the BUILD pillar.
Finally, as part of the TEST AND IMPLEMENT pillar, TOURBIT will also financially support 62 tourism SMEs from the 7 countries involved in the frame of the Digital Acceleration Programme (Call for proposals).
Digital Readiness Index
Tourism SMEs can now assess and improve their state of digitalisation with the TOURBIT Digital Readiness Index (DRI)
The TOURBIT Digital Readiness Index (DRI) is dedicated to tourism SMEs interested in moving forward in digitalisation. It will help them to audit their digital readiness across different company areas and functions and will provide them with recommendations on how to improve.
The entry point to the DRI is the DRI online questionnaire, composed of 44 questions that test the technology usage and capacity of the organisation.
The DRI report is automatically generated once the user finished the questionnaire. It contains an executive summary with a custom-made visualization of the results, an in-depth self-evaluation for the current situation as well as many recommendations how to improve based on multiple algorithms for answering questions.
DRI is free to use and is available in different languages: English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan and Finnish through https://tourbit.eu/dri/
By knowing their level of digitalisation through the DRI, tourism SMEs will be able to participate in upcoming courses adapted to their digital maturity, joint creation workshops and a hackathon with the participation of stakeholders from around the Europe.
In addition, by using DRI tourism SMEs will be in a top position to develop their digitalisation project and get the chance to receive up to 8.000€ or 9.000€ (depending on the country) to support its implementation in the Tourbit Acceleration Programme (starting in January 2023).
Partners:
- Catalan Tourism Board, Spain (Lead partner)
- Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Spain
- Paris Et Compagnie, France
- Arctur d.o.o, Slovenia
- Cluster hospitality from hub.brussels (ABAE), Belgium
- Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Finland
- NEST – Tourism Innovation Center, Portugal
- Iceland Tourism Cluster, Island
