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Guidelines and Training Programme for Corporate Social Responsibility in Tourism Developed by VET and HE Providers for Micro and Small Sized Enterprises
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Tourism is the third largest economic activity in the EU and the sector continues to grow. Although tourism has a broadly positive impact on economic growth and employment, it is also a resource-intensive industry that leaves a large footprint on the environment and it can also threaten cultural heritage and local food production. Therefore, sustainable tourism and CSR in the tourism industry are intensively promoted by political decision makers as well as by an increasing number of customers and guests. In this context, sustainability and CSR have become standard elements of all good quality training at the VET and HE level within the last 10 years. Also large tourism chains and global operating service provides usually apply CSR standards. However, one target group has had so far very little contact with the concepts, philosophy, methods and instruments of sustainability and CSR in tourism: micro and small to medium enterprises. Their managers usually have no access to information about CSR and, in any case, CSR concepts have to date not been tailor-made for micro and small enterprises. The trouble is that 95% of companies in the tourism sector employ fewer than 10 people. This brings us to the situation that the vast majority of tourism providers in Europe have not even heard of CSR let alone applied it. In order to overcome this situation, the project group has developed three main intellectual outputs: A) Implementation of a European survey to obtain a clear picture of the extent to which CSR is known in the tourism industry, especially within micro and small sized enterprises. The survey will be implemented all over Europe and will investigate issues such as general knowledge about CSR standards, the prestige of CSR with tourism managers, fields of interest, demand and needs. Results and outcomes of the survey will be evaluated, analysed and published in a survey report. B) Based on these outcomes the FairTourism training course will be developed, tailor-made to the needs, interests and demands of the main target group. It will covers about 10 modules, such as CSR’s innovation potential for tourism, culture and heritage tourism, green tourism and fair trade tourism. The training course will be based on the requirements and standards of the ECVET and the EQF, and it will allow accreditation of prior learning experience. The course will be piloted in seven partner countries before the training course handbook will be published in all partner languages. C) Finally, we will publish the FairTourism policy paper, which will summarise experiences and outcomes from the project activities, and provide deductions for Europe’s VET/HE policy, labour market as well as its regional, economic and ecological development. It will also introduce benchmarks to be reached within the next five years at the local, regional, national and European levels and provide a list of requests to political stakeholder and policy makers concerning what will be needed for promoting and fostering successfully CSR within smaller tourism enterprises. Through our project activities we want to achieve direct and indirect impact both in the short term as well as in the long term. The European survey will provide, for the first time, an insight into the status quo of CSR knowledge and acceptance within Europe`s smaller enterprises in the tourism industry and it will contain their demands and needs concerning this issue. By this, we will provide a reliable and valid basis for any future decisions and actions taken for improving the situation. The Fairtourism training course will allow VET and HE providers to offer tailor-made CSR training to managers of micro and small enterprises in the tourism industry. One year after the projects has ended, 50 VET and HE provides should offer this course to approximately 500 managers all over Europe. The FairTourism policy paper will give all political decision makers clear guidelines and recommendation of what needs to be done next to overcome the lack of CSR standards in Europe’s largest sector of the tourism industry. All project activities are embedded in a wide range of evaluation and dissemination activities. The partnership contains eight organisations in total; five of them are VET or HE providers specialised in the fields CSR in tourism as well as in tourism management; one is an association of tourism service providers, one is a service provider for tourism enterprises and one is the largest European network for the dissemination of European project results. They have all the skills, experience, and resources needed for implementing this project successfully. Representing the UK, DE, AT, BE, LT, LV, RO and FR the partnership will ensure an appropriate European dimension as well as a fine split between larger and smaller countries with differently developed tourism industry. They all have strong relations to their local tourism industry and to political decision makers.

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