On November 29 and 30th, 2021, members of the Algebra Lab team participated in the official kick off meeting marking the start of the tourism focused EU funded project entitled EU DigiTOUR, led by X23 platform from Italy. The project officially began on the 11th of November 2021 and will be lasting 28 months.

The goals of the project are to support the capacity building of tourism SME’s in the area of digital transformation via transnational and cross-ecosystem support to increase their business growth.  The use of essential digital tech tools such as AR/VR, IA, IoT, and Big Data will be key to this business growth project scheme.

This project will offer tech solutions to traditional tourism SMEs that are usually skeptical of technology.  It will also assist in the bridging of required upgrading skills needed for these new digital implementations. There are three specific objectives:

• to upgrade tech skills and to implement knowledge transfer activities for tourism SME’s via trainings and peer to peer learning;
• to actively support the incubation, acceleration and scaling-up of tourism SMEs/startups to build digital, smart and innovative capacity in the tourism ecosystem involving both public and private partnerships;
• to provide direct financial support for smart solutions easing the transition to digital tech by traditional tourism SME’s that can include business management platforms (especially data analytics and cloud computing), technologies that can shape new innovative tourism products, services and experiences (especially in the field of virtual/augmented reality, Internet-of-Things), and, finally, technologies that can assist, understand and connect (using artificial intelligence) to understand current tourism market flow and growth.

Algebra LAB’s main role within the EU DigiTOUR project is to lead 2 cohorts of incubators/accelerators within the aptly named “High-Growth Program”, which will also extend financial provisions to the best performing startups/SMEs for their future growth.

EU DigiTOUR is receiving funding from an EU funding initiative known as COSME whose policy is to develop and support small and medium businesses in Europe as this sector is considered the backbone of Europe’s economy, offering 85% of all new jobs in the continent. Tourism is historically one of the main components of Croatia’s economy, and thus it is key to instill a strong digital presence in Croatia to support the rebounding tourism industry hard hit by the pandemics.

The activity surrounding these initiatives is taking place via a cross-national consortium of partners supporting the growth of the EU tourism sector in a post-pandemic era. Along with Algebra LAB, partners in this project include X23, Startup Tourismo and ISNART from Italy; ITKAM and Social Impact from Germany; CroaAI and AR/VR Tech and DUNAVNET from Serbia, and Transformation Lighthouse from Slovenia.

And, we will be posting updates about the project as it evolves!