Geo-Tours Guides: Enhancement of Tour Guides and Agents Competences on Geological Tours and Brand Building.

Tourism is the third largest sector of the global economy accounting for approximately 7% of global trade (UN, 2020). Many countries worldwide are highly dependent on the tourism sector as it can represent over 20% of their GDP (UN, 2020). With the Covid-19 outbreak, the sector faced an unprecedented shock as international tourism declined rapidly by almost 70% in 2020 (UN, 2020). As a result, economies, services and livelihoods were impacted and millions of direct employee’s jobs in the tourism sector at stake. The European Federation of Tourism Guide Associations’ (FEG) study (May 2020) revealed tourist guides across the EU as one of the hardest-hit due to the pandemic. The UN policy briefing, announced in August 2020, highlights the necessity of restructuring the tourism sector shifting it towards sustainability and inclusive green growth taken also into consideration the pandemic-induced recession. It envisions the harmonisation of innovation and digitization, while embracing the society, through 5 priorities, including boosting competences and digitalisation of the tourism ecosystem. Further to this, the European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience (2020) sets ambitious, quantitative

The preliminary needs analysis performed by the partnership shaped the project's core mission to increase the digital capacity of tour guides and tour agents while providing expertise on thematic geological tours. In this framework, the project aims to develop a novel blended training package directed to tourist guides, tourist guide students and tourist agencies that are interested to obtain expertise on Geo-tourism and develop the brand of their Geo-tours. The training package will provide skills related to the online branding of their tours, i.e. digital, marketing & networking skills, as well as an online textbook dedicated to specific geological routes and their theoretical information. The training package and an accompanying e-Guidebook will be both OER available on the project’s e-learning platform. The project’s specific objectives were - Design a novel training package for tourist guides, tourist guide students and tourist agencies to obtain expertise on geological thematic tours. - Develop the target groups’ branding-related skills (i.e. digital & social media marketing, general digital skills, networking etc.) to make transition from theory to commercialisation. - Strengthen and extend Geological competences of the tar