BEFuture

Shaping the Future of Europe’s Business Events sector through a regenerative, resilient and sustainable tourism industry transformation

The BEFuture project, funded by the European Union’s programme for the competitivity of SMEs (Single Market Programme), aims to strengthen the sustainability, digitalisation and resilience of SMEs in the business event tourism sector.

A stimulating sector with a substantial carbon footprint

Business events play a key role in the European tourism industry, attracting high-spending visitors and enhancing off-peak tourism. Pre-COVID-19, the sector held 5.4 million business conventions a year, welcoming 704 million visitors all over Europe. Business events are, in addition, vital stimulators for the local economic growth and social development, influencing knowledge exchange, culture, innovation, technology access, business opportunities, and talent attraction. Yet, the sector has a substantial carbon footprint, using a lot of materials and generating enormous amounts of waste.

Solutions for a green, digital and resilient sector

The BEFuture project takes up the challenges of the business event industry by supporting its green and digital transitions towards a resilient business tourism ecosystem. It will do so by guiding the adoption of solutions and will support the development of alternative and sustainable business models as well as broadly stimulating innovation and start-up activities. BEFuture will develop a transnational and cross-ecosystem support service scheme for SMEs with high-added value services to share, learn and collaborate.

Eight partners from six countries

BEFuture is implemented by a partnership of 8 partners from 6 countries: Catalan Tourist Board / Catalan Convention Bureau (Spain), Tipik Communication Agency (Belgium), Visit Flanders (Belgium), Linkeus (France), Verband der Veranstaltungsorganisatoren (Germany), NHL Stender / European Tourism Futures Institute (Netherlands), UNIMIB – Milano University (Italy) and B.Link Barcelona Strategic Projects.

As the leader of Work Package 3 (WP3), B.Link will coordinate acceleration support to cultivate sustainable, innovative, and collaborative initiatives within the business events sector. This includes designing and launching the Acceleration Programme, which aims to enhance resilience and competitiveness in the industry by establishing a governance structure and setting priorities based on preliminary project findings.

B.Link’s specific tasks include developing the call for proposals for the Acceleration Programme, defining eligible activities, grant sizes, and evaluation criteria. Furthermore, it will also host informational seminars to present the Call for proposals and conduct a communication campaign to reach SMEs across participating countries.