Our Partners

BARRABES was founded in 2000. After creating the first e-commerce shop in Europe in 1993 and building a successful business, Barrabés.biz was created to help others create new businesses with innovative solutions. It provides its expertise and know-how in innovation, digitalisation, and enterprise to actively help leading businesses, public authorities, SMEs, and start-ups. It also puts in use the new skills required by the digital era and assists in the cultural transformation of organizations through the implementation of new digital habits thanks to flexible and effective methodologies. Barrabes.biz counts with a set of tools that help boost innovation: a proprietary platform to efficiently manage innovation, following open innovation principle, a proprietary platform for easy and active training of SMEs in digital capacities (Attitude Academy), and innovation spaces managing La Nave (the urban innovation space of the Municipality of Madrid), Madrid in Motion (Madrid urban mobility hub) and the Circular Economy Innovation Centre of Madrid. Since 2019, Barrabés.bis is also organizing Mañana (Tomorrow): an event inspired in the SDGs, involving stakeholders interested in sustainability. Finally, Barrabés is leading Distrito Turismo (Tourism District) in the Valencian Region to build and support a tourism innovation ecosystem.

Naturpolis Ltd is owned by the city of Kuusamo and the municipality of Taivalkoski. Its task is to promote the creation of profitable businesses and new jobs in the Kuusamo Region, to develop the operational preconditions of enterprises and the business environment in the region and to promote regional business cooperation. In addition, Naturpolis administers regional development projects. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Naturpolis helped SMEs apply for funding that has been available to cover the loss in their turnover. It has strong SME networks in the area and works closely together with tourist associations.

Tourism is the main business branch in the area. Sustainability and responsible tourism development are the main points in development activities in ongoing and past tourism projects.

Naturpolis led a sustainable tourism project to help SMEs obtain sustainability certificates and participate in Visit Finland’s Sustainable Travel Finland programme, which aims to get sustainability certificates to tourism destinations in Finland.

Naturpolis also leads the tourism project “Gateway to Land of National Parks”. The project brings all the tourist regions served by the Kuusamo Airport together to collaborate on increasing international tourism and year-round accessibility of the region especially by foregrounding the national parks of the area. In this project particular attention is paid to the fact that the area will develop so that it will be known for its quality services and sustainable business practices. With the help of digital service paths and the improvement of the findability and online purchasability of tourism services, the area will also be more easily accessible. Naturpolis has also a tourism project on data and knowledge management, of relevance to the current project.

ZRC SAZU is a leading Slovenian research centre in the humanities and a cutting-edge academic institution in Central, East and Southeast Europe. It encompasses 18 research institutes and conducts research on a variety of topics linked with cultural heritage and sustainable tourism. ZRC SAZU has its own publishing house, audio-visual laboratory and numerous collections. Experiences in the field of sustainable tourism and SME support:

• Creating support tools for sustainable tourism certification.
• Organising capacity building activities for tourism providers and DMOs
• Improvement of national sustainable tourism certification.
• Research on tourism business experiences with certification
• Setting up sustainability criteria for developing tourism products
• Facilitating the cooperation among SMEs, between SMEs and public authorities; facilitating the development of tourism product, including testing.

ZRC SAZU is member of Sustainable Tourism Community, operating within Interreg MED programme.

Sibiu County Tourism Association ensures the coordinated management and marketing of Sibiu County tourism destination by making responsible use of the territory’s natural and cultural resources with benefits for businesses, residents, and guests alike.

Their efforts build on the UN sustainability goals and they are eager to work through nature with the local SMEs and the partner regions to achieve more regarding the sustainable and creative use of natural resources.

50% of Sibiu County’s territory is covered by protected areas. The Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Highlands are rich reservoirs of biodiversity, and the valuable ingredient for ecotourism destinations. Sky as a natural resource will be integrated in nature positive tourism roadmaps as they aim to transform Sibiu County into an ecotourism destination with diversified and high-quality nature experiences (wildlife watching, dark sky, nature wellness).

Sibiu County Tourism Association has expertise in the following fields:

• Develop quality and sustainability guidelines for SMEs (e.g., green accommodation within the “European Tourism Going Green 2030‟ project, Sibiu local breakfast, Guidelines for sustainable events).
• Promote ICT-based knowledge tools and platforms for SMEs (RU ready for certification? tool, aniidrumetiei.ro website/app).
• Transfer experiences and knowledge through workshops, conferences, field visits at local and European level.
• Capacity building programs to develop and promote new sustainable tourism products that enrich the destination’s identity, respond to the new travelling trends, and accelerate sustainable tourism revival.
• Work with multidisciplinary teams to document, develop, and promote ecotourism policies, infrastructure, services, and experiences.
• Measuring the sustainability performance is a key activity of the organisation. The destination is being assisted by experts to improve its sustainability KPIs through the Smart Tourism Destinations program.