STEPPA project

Under the leadership of the Joensuu University in Finland and in strong cooperation with the Leeds Metropolitan University in England and the EUROPARC Federation, the project proposal STEPPA was submitted under the project call “Knowledge Networks for the competitiveness and sustainability of European tourism” published by DG ENT. If successful the project will start in January 2010 involving ten partners from seven countries in various activities working towards the establishment of a network of SMEs, protected areas and research centres working with the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas.

Project objectives

a) promote and strengthen the cooperation between the different partnership initiatives aimed at small and micro tourism enterprises working with (Charter) protected areas;

b) benchmark the different sustainability certification schemes and business/park working partnerships against best practices at European level and work on their harmonization;

c) strengthen businesses’ competitiveness through the support of tourism research centres and access to tailored sustainability research and market tools;

d) demonstrate links between implementation of sustainable management systems, increased competitiveness, growth in conservation awareness and support, and businesses and destination value leading to better customer value;

e) promote capacity-building of business owners and protected areas’ managers on sustainable tourism approaches and evaluation;

f) disseminate best practices at a European level through the creation of online networking platform for sharing of resources and tools for protected areas, businesses, and other interested parties.

The project activities are divided into six work packages. You can download the project summary from this page.