The European Commission is addressing a repertoire of initiatives to help small businesses to thrive in the Travel Industry, such as to ease access and use of information technologies and communications, and to help employers to manage their businesses.
Andalucia Lab wants to underline some of most useful tools available for the Small businesses that make up the travel Industry:
Tourism Business Portal
The tourism business portal was launched by the Commission to help European tourism businesses to better manage their businesses and to improve the competitiveness of industry in the digital global marketplace.
This website provides practical and updated information about:
- Building your Business: including issues related to starting, financing and running your company.
- Online commercialization and positioning.
- Training and Employment opportunities in Europe.
Live events on digital tourism
Webinars created to guide SMEs in the tourism industry through digital matters. Led by digital experts, webinars examine recent trends in tourists making use of technology to discover, plan and share their travel experiences. Topics include:
- Your business. Today’s visitors.
- Marketing your business online.
- Managing your online reputation.
- Importance of content.
- Succeeding in social.
- Thinking mobile (m-tourism): use of Smartphones throughout the entire customer experience.
On the other hand there are many other opportunities in keeping involved in European Commission initiatives in the travel area:
- Virtual Tourism Observatory: provides access to a broad collection of Travel Market Information, data and analysis on current trends in the tourism sector, including the Eurobarometer surveys and different studies and reports.
- Training and careers opportunities contained in EURES, EU job mobility portal provides since 2014 a specialized tourism and hospitality industry section in which job seekers can post their qualifications and experience, while employers can search for candidates to fill vacancies, and Erasmus.
- Enterprise Europe Network: The network helps SMEs to grow and innovate internationally by organizing brokerage events to help companies reach technology transfer or cooperation agreements with other companies in their sector.
The recent creation of the Digital Tourism Network by the European Commission demonstrated the commitment to reduce the digital gap between large corporations and Small companies, a shared aim with Andalucía Lab. The Network will comprise representatives from the industry and EU countries to discuss how to boost the innovation capacity of tourism entrepreneurs, especially SMEs. Andalucía Lab, through our managing director, José Luis Córdoba, is represented in that Network.
Andalucía Lab is building international alliances and networks in order to boost Andalucia’s Tourism SMEs competitiveness
