In an ever globalising world, guides are increasingly being faced with intercultural, sustainable and unique experience demands from tour participants, as different research studies have already shown. To address these requests a guide is challenged to continuously self-improve and to think of lifelong learning as an opportunity rather than a burden. A first European project, called Innoguide, addressed this particular need for more intercultural, sustainable and experiential competences for guides and developed an online platform for guide trainers with teaching materials on these topics. These materials can be consulted at: http://learning.viaviatourismacademy.com/innoguide/. Based on feedback from users it became clear, however, that a follow-up initiative was needed to further develop the online platform, but more importantly also to provide more hands-on training to gain more skills and in-depth knowledge on these topics (interculturality, sustainability and experiential guiding). The first goal of this Innoguide 2.0 project was thus to contribute to a further improvement of the quality of guide training in Europe. A second objective of this project was to offer extra support and expertise to guide organisations to manage a profitable, customer-oriented and qualitative organisation, in short to stimulate their entrepreneurial skills. To provide this support this project used the principles of service design thinking and innovation. This approach resulted in, based on a co-creation method, the development of different supporting instruments guide organisations can use to strengthen the management of their organisation and particularly the quality of their customer service. In a first phase, together with the help of stakeholders, different persona's were created that reflect the different types of guides or guide managers (general role) you can be. Based on these persona's a short self-assessment (in the form of a quiz) was developed as a tool for organisations to gain more grip on their guides' profiles. It helps them to think what type of guides best fit their company profile and how employees in guide organisations should/could be trained. The other developed instruments (customer journey and testimonials) help guide organisations to gain customer feedback and to address weaker points in their customer service which ultimately benefits the tourist who wants to make use of the services of the organisation.In summary this project has the following two overall project objectives:• To further improve guide training by:- Updating and refining the teaching materials on the current Innoguide e-learning platform (moodle) - Putting together and organising six different train-the-trainer workshops on the 3 Innoguide topics that promote the importance of sustainability, interculturality and experiential guiding as key competences for guides in Europe- Upgrading the current moodle and the project website (www.innoguidetourism.eu) to more dynamic and interactive online platforms where different stakeholders (guides, guide trainers, guide organisations) can find best practices and materials that inspire them to innovate the work field of guides and guide organisations.• To stimulate and develop the entrepreneurial and customer service qualities of guide organisations by:- Developing an “Innoguide self-scan” based for guide organisations, based on personas. This self-scan, in the form of a playful quiz, gives guides and guide organisations a sense of who they are as guides and it helps guide organisations to think of what type of guides best fit their company profile.- Developing supporting service design based instruments that help the organisations improve their service qualityFor this project a diverse partner consortium was involved, each bringing their own expertise to the table. More specifically Toerisme Vlaanderen (Belgium), ViaVia Tourism Academy (Belgium), NHTV (The Netherlands), Service&CO (Denmark), Erhvervsakademi Dania (Denmark), Laurea (Finland) and Drustvo Marije Juric Zagorke (Croatia) have engaged themselves to invest in this project.This project has affected all the stakeholders directly involved in the field of guiding, namely guides, guide trainers, guide organisations and indirectly the tourists. By stressing the importance of a good service quality, it promoted and integrated a more customer and service-oriented perspective in guide organisations and it contributed to the further professionalisation in the field of guiding by highlighting and teaching the importance of several key competences for guides. This project contributed to the ambition of developing more sustainable, responsible, innovative and high-quality guided tours around Europe.

SmartCulTour aims to support regional development in European regions, with special attention to rural peripheries and the urban fringe, through sustainable cultural tourism. The project redefines cultural tourism through a contemporary lens and provides a comprehensive measurement framework for supply, demand and impacts. In order to support knowledge-led destination management, a decision-support system (DSS) will be developed for wide-scale monitoring purposes across European regions. The DSS will synthesize both traditional and non-traditional data sources, the latter particularly related to big data analytics, thereby assisting smart regional development. Besides a contribution to conceptual development and cultural tourism measurement, the main objective of SmartCulTour relates to the facilitation of community-led rural development through field experimentation in 6 living labs. Prior to these living labs, a comprehensive desk research will identify significant sustainable cultural tourism policies, their impacts and critical success factors. These best cases will inspire a series of possible local interventions. Within the living labs, novel creative approaches to stakeholder engagement are tested, notably arts-based methods, serious games, and service design which will help to provide local context and support. A toolkit will be designed to help destinations implement local actions towards sustainable cultural tourism development. SmartCulTour will therefore contribute to theory development, empirical validation of best practices within a living labs setting, and procedural development, particularly by providing European regions with a set of strategies to optimally engage with stakeholders and co-create sustainable cultural tourism experiences.