Rural tourism is one of the major economic pillars of rural regions in Europe, representing a sustainable approach to economic development especially in times of crisis, facilitating new employment and contributing to the conservation of the natural, social and cultural heritage. Rural tourism is particularly significant in remote, less developed regions - as it is the case of the partner regions of the SKILLTOUR proposal - where agricultural activities or industry are restrictive and economy is reliant on tourism. To develop sustainable rural tourism businesses, entrepreneurial and competent human resource is needed. Creativity and entrepreneurial thinking plays an important role in diversifying rural tourism services, sustainable strategies being the motor of local development. To address this need the SKILLTOUR project aims to foster the development of entrepreneurial and transversal skills of adults with low access to adult training (i.e. adults who run or plan to run micro/family tourism businesses in less developed rural areas of Europe ), in order to be able to deliver innovative, high quality products and services and manage their businesses in a sustainable and responsible manner. To reach this aim the followings main activities are foreseen in the project: • Research study on needs for entrepreneurial and transversal skills development of adults who run micro/family rural tourism businesses • Good practice models for sustainable rural tourism businesses • Development of new OERs (tailored curriculum and training materials) for entrepreneurship education to support adult organizations in delivering high quality key competence development trainings for adults disadvantaged • Development of a user friendly online learning space that will guide current and future rural entrepreneurs in their key competences development through a structured learning experience; organized as a multi-device learning area, the online portal will contain an interactive virtual tour of competences (study video) and attractive multimedia materials to support and motivate the autonomous learning of adults learners The core target groups of the project are: • adults who run or plan to run micro/family rural tourism businesses (pensions, farm-stays, restaurants, village inns, camping or guest houses, etc,), • adult education providers with high exploitation potential of the project outputs The project partnership consists of 7 European organisations highly motivated in exploiting the future SKILLTOUR outputs, with complementary expertise and highly experienced in the field of innovative adult training, entrepreneurship education, design of multimedia, web based educational products and study video production. Besides the management staff, who will participate in the development and valorization of outputs, minimum 6 training staff from the partner organisations will be involved in activities related to development of innovative training materials and in the implementation of the local pilot trainings. The latter will have minimum 60 participants (10/country) and will assure evaluation of the online learning portal on European level along with further Six multiplier events will be implemented with exploitation purposes of project outcomes, with a minimum 210 participants: • 5 dissemination workshops in Belgium, Cyprus, Spain, Greece and Romania will be organized where representatives of the target group, project stakeholders (adult training centres, rural tourism associations, organizations responsible for rural tourism development etc.), and policy makers will participate • in the Promoter’s country, United Kingdom, a final international conference will be held to promote further European cooperation on entrepreneurial education of adult learners. For successful valorisation of project results a Stakeholder Analysis along with a Dissemination strategy will be implemented, so that the project results can have a considerable impact in each country, raise awareness of education and training opportunities within the Erasmus+ programme, with special emphasis for up-skilling and entrepreneurial education of adults, enhance transversal skills and competency development of adults and increase employability in less developed rural areas. We strongly believe that the new curriculum and the various innovative and modern learning materials along with the study video elaborated, piloted, evaluated and improved during the project will become core part of the training offer of the organisations involved in the project. The SKILLTOUR learning portal sustained for a minimum of 5 years will be largely promoted online among adult education communities and beyond. A further potential benefit of the project would be a continuing development and adapting of the educational tools for other groups in specific economic sectors which are not directly targeted by the project.