The present TEMPUS project aims to develop and strengthen rural tourism through designing, testing, implementing and evaluating a programme of special modules for rural tourism to be included in new Bachelor and Master Curricula in the field of Tourism. These new developed modules will correspond in full to the Bologna principles and Tuning recommendations and be based on the experience of the European partners of the project. Russian universities are increasingly aware of the need to modernize their curricula and to change their curricula into modern two level Bachelor / Master courses. The modules of the rural tourism will be elaborated in such a way that they fit into the respective Bachelor and Master courses of the Russian Universities, thus enhancing the European dimension and comparability of qualifications.Together with the module development for rural tourism the project will start its piloting that will entail practical introduction of rural tourism in Russia. The Pskov oblast in north-west Russia was selected as pilot region, with very good pre-conditions for the development of rural tourism. In line with the national priority of curricular reform for Russia and in response to the labour market needs in the field of tourism at the national level, the project grounds on a substantial amount of positive activities carried out by the Russian partner universities towards the introduction of Bologna principles in the Russian higher education system. The connection to the business sector for rural tourism will be improved to better identify the needs and demands of the sector, to increase the transparency between education and the business sector, to generate additional financing and to facilitate the entry of the students to the labour market. Not at least, the development of special fields of tourism and tourism education is of utmost importance for the tourism sector in the Russian Federation. One of the main objectives is to enlarge the fields of tourism offers and to upgrade the service quality in order to generate a higher value in this sector. The demand in the sector in Russia exceeds by far the supply of well-trained and educated employees. The Wider Objective of the project is to enhance international comparability and compatibility of qualifications of specialists in the sector of rural tourism in line with Bologna requirements. As Specific Objective, the project formulates the modernisation of curricula for the 2 cycles of higher education in the sphere of tourism by developing specialisation modules in rural tourism. The specific objective of the project includes the elaboration of specialization modules in rural tourism for the 2-cycle curricula in tourism and their piloting. This will lead to the upgrading and harmonisation of the existing Bachelor and Master Curricula in tourism in RF with European tourism curricula and the integration of the new elaborated modules into the study process. An intensive preparation of the participating teaching staff, and new teaching and learning methods will be introduced that are necessary to deliver the new modules in line with the Tuning recommendations. Furthermore, the project will create teaching and learning materials for the new modules according to the new demands of the study process. Practice orientation of the project is a specific objective to prepare the ground for sustainable rural tourism in the Russian Federation.The main activities of the project will include five basic elements: 1) needs analysis (development of professional profiles), 2) development of academic profiles to lay the foundation for the subsequent development of education modules in rural tourism and know-how transfer, 3) development of teaching and learning materials and qualify assurance system for the new modules; 4) testing and fine-tuning of new moduleand 5) dissemination of new curricula to enhance the HE modernisation in RF and lay the ground for sustainable rural tourism