About the Project

Next GEN Tourism is a collaborative Erasmus+funded project focused on strengthening the long-term sustainability of tourism businesses across Europe by addressing the challenge of succession planning. Many tourism enterprises — from guesthouses and cafés to tour operators and visitor attractions — are small owner-managed or family-run businesses that lack structured support when it comes to planning for leadership, ownership, or management transitions. Next GEN Tourism exists to help tourism businesses prepare early, plan better, and transition successfully into the future—whether that means handing operations on to family members, new managers, external buyers, or next-generation entrepreneurs. By integrating succession readiness into vocational education and support systems, the project ensures that great tourism businesses don’t simply end when founders step back but continue to thrive.

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Project Description

Project Impact

By the end of the project, Next GEN Tourism aims to strengthen the long-term resilience and continuity of tourism SMEs across Europe by embedding structured succession planning into vocational education and enterprise support systems. The project targets a measurable increase in succession readiness among participating businesses, including improvement in awareness and preparedness for ownership or leadership transition and an increase in businesses actively developing formal succession plans.

The project will strengthen the professionals who support tourism enterprises by engaging approximately 120–150 VET educators, business advisors, and tourism stakeholders across partner countries, while directly involving 40–60 tourism SMEs and potential successors in pilot testing and validation activities.

To extend impact beyond, Next GEN Tourism will deliver a replicable Succession Competence Framework, a modular training curriculum, a digital self-assessment app, and an open online resource hub, with the ambition to reach at least 100 tourism support organisations across Europe and achieve a minimum of 1,000 resource downloads during the project lifecycle.

Expected Results

Tourism Succession Competence Framework – A clear, tourism-specific guide outlining key information and decisions for successful business transitions.

Modular Training & Learning Resources – Flexible materials for tourism educators, mentors, enterprise support professionals, and successors.

Digital Succession Readiness Self-Assessment Tool – A simple tool to help businesses spot gaps early and begin informed planning conversations.

Shared Knowledge Hub – An online space bringing together all project outputs, examples, and tools for long-term access.

Why we are excited about this project

We are excited about Next GEN Tourism because it aligns strongly with Momentum’s mission as an education and innovation company, built on more than 20 years of experience supporting SMEs, vocational education, and regional development across Ireland and Europe.

The project’s focus on strengthening succession planning within tourism reflects our commitment to sustainable enterprise, long-term resilience, and practical business support — ensuring that family-run and owner-managed tourism businesses are not lost due to a lack of structured transition planning. It gives us the opportunity to translate research and real industry challenges into tools and training that tourism educators, advisors, and SMEs can genuinely apply. With Momentum’s experience delivering Erasmus+ projects and leading dissemination, training design, and impact evaluation, we are motivated to ensure that Next GEN Tourism delivers clear, accessible resources and digital tools that extend well beyond the partnership—supporting tourism communities to plan confidently for the next generation.

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#NextGENTourism #TourismSMEs #BusinessSuccession #TourismContinuity

#TourismResilience #RuralTourism #VET #TourismEducation #ErasmusPlus

 

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