The EUMillennialsTOUR project is about the development of a transnational tourism product to increase tourism arrivals in the low-middle season. Target of the proposed projects are youth, in particular the “Millennials”, i.e. generation of people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, also defined as Generation Y. The aim of the project is to create an innovative tourism package mixing together culture, education, knowledge capitalisation and entrepreneurship up-skilling. The idea is to offer an immersive learning/ creative trip addressed to the edu/ school-trip tourism market field, comprising hands-on curriculum-linked activities addressed to youth. The focus in on young people involved in the Cultural and Creative sector.

School-trip tourism, in fact, is nontrivial: approx 92,9M students make more than 100M day trips and 15-20M overnight trips a year. School-trips are planned by secondary schools all over the year, as well as students from secondary schools, HEIs and ACADs travel mainly for learning purposes. Starting from this premises, we identify the school-trip tourism market sector an effective lever to improve arrivals in low-medium season period, meeting the goals of the Calypso initiative. The UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and World Youth Student and Educational (WYSE) Travel Confederation together have documented the growing role that youth and student travel has taken within the global tourism industry over the last decades. More young people travel and do so more frequently and over greater distances than ever before. On top of that, the EUMillennialsTOUR project will create a transnational tourism product for the school-trip tourism market, addressed to secondary schools and High Education Institutes/ ACADs, increasing the competitiveness of the EU tourism and capitalising the shared value of European industrial heritage sites under the paradigm of sustainability, by ultimately also complementing national, regional and local policies in the field of creative industries and industrial heritage tourism.

This will result in a concrete contribution to the professionalisation of the tourism, cultural and educational workers. The overall concept of the project will be based on the statement: “Travelling to know our past and to forge our future”. So, our tourism product will be at the same time: 1. curriculum-based, i.e. directly linked to the lessons taught in the classroom, representing either an integral part or extension of the formal learning experience (target segment: 15-18 years; secondary school students). 2. based on extracurricular excursions, designed outside the constraints of curriculum demands and not so strictly focused to a particular class or discipline (target segment: 19-25years; HEIs and ACADs students). The design of the tourism concept will be based on industrial heritage sites as narrative logic - in particular in the field of textile and fashion industries as witnesses of a the great contribution brought to innovation by the Industrial Revolution. In parallel, we will also include insights into the 2 disruptive "third industrial revolution" and its innovative tools and processes represented by 3D printing as well as Fablabs as living lab where the new industrial revolution is happening up to date. The resulting tourism product will stimulate the young generations to the value of EU industrial heritage sites as memory of our past, as well as inspiration mean to forge their future.

List of Work Packages

WP 1. Strategic and Technical Coordination

Work package leader: X23

Major tasks and objectives:

• Management and coordination of the project
• Organization of partnership within the consortium
• Coordination and transparency with the EU-DG, industry and enterprises
• Ensuring the compliance with the contractual framework

WP 2. Tourism Product Design Assessment

Work package leader: WYSE

Major tasks and objectives:

• Creation of a cross-border transnational tourism product
• Identification of relevant public and private stakeholders of the tourism/culture/education sector
• Engagement of possible sponsors in order to ensure the project’s financial sustainability
• Benchmarking and market analysis of the edu/ schooltrip tourism market field
• Investigation of students´ and teachers' needs
• Ground work for WP3 – exchange and preparation for the transfer of “good practices”

WP 3. Capacity Building: Good Practices Exploitation and Preparation of Transfer

Work package leader: M2C Institute

Major tasks and objectives:

• Elaboration and delivering of an e-learning course focused on industrial heritage, tourism, creative and cultural industries to be addressed to public and private stakeholders active in those fields
• Elaboration of a digital "syllabus" for teachers
• Production of digital didactic materials (ibook) for the students

 
Specific objectives:

• Good practices exchange and creation of public private partnerships
• Strengthening of management skills of public and private bodies in charge of developing thematic educational tourism products in relation to European
• industrial heritage sites
• Provision of proper knowledge to the teachers regarding the didactic materials
• Increased awareness on key concepts such as sustainability, cultural identity, EU citizenship
• Motivation of all direct beneficiaries to participate to the e-learning programmes
• Preparation of the transfer of good practices and contribution to the creation of EUMillennialsTOUR tourist destinations with high quality management
• and promotion practices
• Increased competitiveness of European tourism, in particular by increasing access in low-season period thanks to school-trip tourism

WP 4. Design of the Tourism Concept

Work package leader: STA Travel

Major tasks and objectives:

• Definition of the transnational tourism product based on industrial heritage sites thematic loggia (in particular textile ones)
• Enhancement of the added value of a transnational cultural EUMillennialsTOUR on single European heritage sites
• Creation of an innovative high quality tourism product able to attract youth tourists
• Better exploitation of industrial heritage in a touristic point of view, involving the local community and fostering the positive effect of cultural routes on the competitiveness of SMEs

WP 5. Pilot Test Running

Work package leader: CTS

Major tasks and objectives:

• Effective Engagement of the participants identified in WP2
• Planning and Organization of the pilot actions in the 4 different countries involved
• Assistance to the participant at destinations
• Collection of the participants’ considerations about the trip

WP 6. Evaluation of Results and Lesson Gathering

Work package leader: X23

Major tasks and objectives:

• Collection of data from social media streaming related to tourism, youth, education and culture
• Data gathering during the pilot test in order to monitor and measure the rate of experience of the direct beneficiaries
• Collection, measurement and evaluation of the data gathered during the action in order to produce recommendations to policy makers and the tourism value chain players

WP 7. Communication and Dissemination

Work package leader: X23

Major tasks and objectives:

• Communication on the project’s activities, both to network partners and to relevant stakeholders outside the network
• Dissemination of the project’s results and findings, both among project partners and beyond, to the wider community of relevant stakeholders
• Engagement with the direct beneficiaries of the pilot actions and to stimulate them to interact on social media channels for a proper measurement and evaluation of the experience
• Guarantee of the visibility of the co-financing of the European Union

Main activities will deal with:
• Study and development of the implementation plan
• Study and development of a communication and dissemination plan
• Creation of the official website and related digital/ traditional communication tools/ materials
• Organization of promotion and dissemination events (workshops, seminars, final conference events)