Building Regional Actions for New Developments in Tourism
Europe is the N.1 travel destination in the world today. Tourism is its 3rd economic activity, with 3.4 million enterprises, 12 million jobs and accounting for 9,7% of the GDP. The sector has proved resilient to the crisis with international tourist arrivals reaching 588 million in 2014 and a yearly increase of more than 4% in 2010-2015. On the other hand, the highest growth of tourism in recent years has been in non-EU areas. Americas registered +8%, and Asia and the Pacific +5% in 2014. The competition from alternative less expensive destinations is surging, and other world regions are likely to replace EU as the most visited area by 2030. To avoid receding, EU regions need to support the sector by helping tourism SMEs become more competitive and their offer more attractive. The diversification of the offer and the promotion of EU’s unique attractions should be made a major competitive advantage for EU tourism.

The objective of the BRANDTOUR project is to improve the partners’ capacity to support tourism through the promotion, innovation and diversification of the offer. The project aims to provide better policy instruments to develop new customised tourism products that can satisfy emerging target groups, and favour inbound flows towards the EU.

Through interregional cooperation the partners will develop better instruments to:
- enhance the visibility and market uptake of known and less known destinations; 
- valorise attractions through better marketing, branding and communication;
- innovate the offer by clustering tourism SMEs and products;
- increase synergies between tourism private and public stakeholders;
- deliver more customised packages by diversifying the offer; 
- leverage local value chains and excellence to develop thematic and experience-oriented tourism.

These instruments will increase the ability of EU tourism SMEs to meet the challenges of the market, reduce seasonalization and maximise the economic potential of the sector.