YooniK takes part in the European consortium Tourism 4.0 aimed at stimulating innovation uptake in the tourism sector and providing financial support to over 100 start-ups.

Composed of 10 leading partners from 6 countries from tourism, innovation and business services sectors, Tourism4.0 will assist over 100 tourism and digital SME/startups, stimulating digital transformation and innovation uptake towards improving economic, environmental and well-being outcomes.

Tourism 4.0 aims at developing a capacity building, technology transfer, support and assistance programme to enable tourism sector SMEs to adopt and leverage emerging digital technologies to improve their productivity, sustainability and overall business performance.

The main objectives are:

1. Technical and business assistance.
2. Peer-learning, training and awareness support.
3. Financial support to tourism SMEs.

More specifically:

• Building network platform that will bring SMEs, technology providers, public authorities and tourism stakeholders to build an ecosystem for knowledge transfer, peer learning and innovation uptake.
• Developing an open innovation challenge aimed at identifying digital SMEs/startups with disruptive solutions to the tourism sector.
• Developing funding scheme to assist tourism SMEs in digital transformation and innovation uptake, through Innovation & Feasibility Assessment Projects, in cooperation with innovation service providers.
• Digital technologies skills upgrading, mentoring and assistance programmes run by technology/business experts to build capacity, know-how and technology transfer opportunities.
• Supporting smart innovation and novel initiatives via partners from cross-disciplinary areas including ICT, digital technologies and sustainability.
• Use cases identification or flagship initiatives to demonstrate SMART tourism solutions to allow for cross-regional and transnational transfer of best practices.
• Promoting workshops/webinars/conferences on new trends and routes for post-Covid recovery, including networking with public/private tourism stakeholders and investors.

Consortium partners include: Federturismo Confindustria, NEST Centro de Inovação do Turismo, City of Dubrovnik Development Agency, Cluster Digital de Catalunya, Malta Business Bureau, AEI Cluster Turismo de Extremadura, Association of Employers in Croatian Hospitality, Málaga TechPark, Regional Pomeranian Chamber of Commerce and, naturally, YooniK.

The project consortium has a duration of 25 months and has received funding by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) of the European Commission. The total private/public investment will be 1.3M€, of which 420k€ will be to directly support tourism start-ups.