EU ECO-TANDEM ACADEMY: the results!

During the event “EU ECO-TANDEM Program: sustainable innovation in the tourism industry” within the framework of EU GREEN-WEEK 2021, our partners highlighted the good results of EU ECO-TANDEM Academy. Check out!

• What was the EU ECO-TANDEM ACADEMY?

The ECO-TANDEM ACADEMY offered two programmes designed for entrepreneurs, managers of SMEs and tourism professionals in the public and private sector: the theory-based ECO-TANDEM Education Programme and the practically oriented ECO-TANDEM Training Programme.

• The Education Programme 

The EU ECO-TANDEM Education Programme was a self-study e-learning course that allowed participants to access the content at their leisure. As a course participant you got an overview of recent developments and first-hand knowledge that you can apply in your daily work.

This programme, delivered by the University of Graz, consisted of ten modules following a scientific approach to provide abundant material about the tourism industry and its future. The modules included theoretical and practical inputs enriched by case studies (good practices) and optional real-time online meetings with experts and practitioners

The format: the results of a qualitative survey conducted with the participants showed that a very large majority of the participants appreciated the format of the self-study e-learning course. Indeed, 17 out of 30 people rated 5/5 and 10 people rated 4/5.

The knowledge: a large majority (20/30) of participants estimated that they increased “very much” their knowledge about sustainable tourism through their participation in the programme. 

• The Training Programme 

The EU ECO-TANDEM Training Programme was a real-time, online training course that was targeted towards SMEs related to the tourism supply and value chain, with emphasis in accommodation facilities, tour operators, travel agents and technology-oriented start-ups. The industry-specific modules on offer aimed to improve skills and build capacity around the standards for sustainability in the tourism industry. Three of these modules overlapped with the parallel running EU ECO-TANDEM Education Programme.

The first important result to mention is the origin of the participants. 82% of them were actors of the tourism sector. Also 31% of the applicants were SMEs or startups. 

The Training Programme was also 14 final groups between 29-30 members each (initially), 10 modules, 900 slides over 10 webinars, 30 hours of training, 208 max unique attendants per webinar, 168 mean unique attendants per webinar, about 122 questions in Zoom Q&A and 35 polls were conducted during webinars. 

• WEBINAR POLLS

• Communication 

In terms of communication, the majority of participants heard about EU ECO-TANDEM Academy through the communication actions of the partners (39%) or the EU ECO-TANDEM Other Social Media (30%). 

• Origin of the participants

• The two most represented countries were Italy and Greece. 53% of the participants came from Italy and 12% came from Greece.
• 30 countries were represented, 16 are not part of the European Union.

• Sustainable Tourism

For 34% of participants, sustainable tourism was a way to support the local economy. For 30%, this was the only way against climate change.

In addition, 62% of participants believed that the perception of climate change is very real. COVID-19 has had an impact on the activities of participants since 70% of them believed that the impact of the pandemic on their activities is "high". 44% believed that tourist arrivals have fallen from 50% to 65% compared to 2019.