The project was designed to enable “Storydoers” to develop: * Storydoing skills: digital narrative skills for digital and social media platforms; * Digital competences: to reduce the digital dividing of local tourism businesses of rural areas; * Social competences: for community engagement and sustainable development of rural areas. For this reason the project produced free educational resources to teach storydoing skills for: *Improving the competitiveness of rural businesses that operate in tourism and related sectors; *Developing the capacities of rural businesses to design and promote sustainable local tourism experiences based on Storydoing. The primary target group consists of entrepreneurs and workers, aspiring storydoers, of local tourism businesses of rural areas: TA & TO, Small Hotel Accommodation & Guest Houses,Restaurants, Tour & Mountain Guides, Transport companies, Museums, Other local tourist services like farms, bakeries, breweries, etc. The project targets also supporting organizations of rural entrepreneurship: incubators, intermediaries organization and many others.
Tourism is among the key drivers for socio-economic progress and contributes to employment and economic growth, as well as to empower rural, peripheral or less developed areas. COVID-19 has significantly affected tourism sector, according to UNWTO Europe had experienced a 70% decrease in international tourists’ arrivals. As a side effect of the COVID crisis digitalization and online presence became vital for any type of business. Unfortunately, local tourism businesses of rural areas are facing a “double digital divide”. On the supply side, they are still lagging behind in terms of the provision of NGA infrastructure, on the demand side, many rural areas lack the basic skills and knowledge of the potential of digital technology so that even if the ‘digital highways’ are in place, they may remain under- exploited in terms of service provision, business use, or customer take up. Rural areas and local tourism businesses shouldn’t be left behind. The project “Digital Story Doing for Local Tourism” was created to support small and medium tourism enterprises in their digitalization efforts, support them in their efforts to share online their businesses’ philosophy and convert their values into action.