There are many human activities that contribute to the generation of CO₂ emissions and climate change. The European Commission has launched the Green Deal action plan to make the EU’s economy more sustainable by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities and making the transition just and inclusive. The tourism industry is one of the EU’s economic sectors that contributes to CO₂ emissions and must take action to help reach the ambitious EU’s 2030 Green Deal target of reducing green house gas emissions by at least 55%. Tourism stakeholders need to understand the link between climate change, tourism and transport, low carbon footprint energy sources and how to design low carbon tourism travel paths and options. Further compounding the issue, trainers in the vocational education and training (VET) field, as well as tourism mentors, lack relevant training resources on “basic skills of low carbon tourism” that can help them explicitly target and reach out to tourism learners and stakeholders.

Thus the project aims to develop an innovative training curriculum and innovative training materials for increasing tourism sector stakeholder awareness of tourism sector contribution to climate change and possibilities to achieve low carbon tourism.

Upon completion, the VINCI project will deliver the following key outputs:

• An innovative curriculum to foster knowledge of low carbon tourism concepts and amplify related entrepreneurship
• A set of augmented reality/virtual reality enhanced case studies of how stakeholders can generate less CO₂ emissions in all three travel phases involved in the tourism sector
• The VINCI low carbon tourism and related entrepreneurship’ digital VET toolbox
• The VINCI trainers guide e-book on low carbon tourism and related entrepreneurship.

By the end of the project, VET trainers of tourism stakeholders will have a set of modular resources that they can use to effectively train learners (staff members of tourism-related organizations) according to their own learning styles and needs.

Project partners

• Macdac Engineering Consultancy Bureau LTD  (MECB) (Malta)
• Institute of Tourism Studies (Malta)
• Institut za turizam (Croatia)
• University Politehnica of Bucharest (Romania)
• Social Cooperative Enterprise Drosostalida (Greece)
• Institut pro regionální rozvoj, o.p.s. (Czech Republic)

The VINCI project is funded with support from the European Commission through Erasmus Grant No. 2021-1-MT01-KA220-VET-000025011.