BEFuture
Shaping the Future of Europe’s Business Events sector through a regenerative, resilient and sustainable tourism industry transformation
- Start: 16/09/2023
- End: 16/09/2023
- Total budget: 4.174.193,05 €
- EU Grant: 3.996.773,70 €
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.