Partners

The FOOD ZONE partnership countries offer a fascinating diversity of food tourism, local experiences, and products as well as diverse food cultivation and processing methods. The differences and similarities in the partner countries offer a fertile ground for capacity building and the exchange of best practices.

Our partnership is composed of partners from Spain, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Cyprus, Montenegro.

CCIC – “Founded in 1899, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Cáceres (Camara Oficial de Comercio e Industria de Cáceres) is a Public Law Body, whose main aim is to defend the general commercial and industrial interests of the province of Caceres (Extremadura, Spain).

The Chamber is run by a group of 29 entrepreneurs who are elected every four years by all the entrepreneurs from the Province of Caceres. They represent the Assembly, which defines all the general objectives to be reached. The Assembly is composed of workers commissions whose aim is to closely analyse the problems of the economic sectors and to define the objectives in detail.

The Chamber collaborates actively with more than 30.000 Caceres-based companies, covering various needs through implementing services as All-in-One Offices for Business, Innovation advice, Business Incubators, VET and Higher Training, Promoting of Exports, and International Trade Missions. Its main objective is developing initiatives to extend the culture of quality and innovation so that SMEs in Extremadura Region can tap the opportunities afforded by globalisation.

The Chamber serves these businesses through a network of three branches, two business incubators (temporary shelter structure designed to company start-ups) and two One-Stop Offices for Business (and processing for companies with national tax authorities and social security) covering the region, providing value to implement economic development programmes.

EURAKOM, founded in 2005 by Nicolas Fourcroy, is a French boutique consultancy working across sectors with a wide range of public authorities, private companies and organisations at all levels to accompany their projects and initiatives from concept to implementation. EURAKOM also offers thematic expertise in areas such as education and culture, sustainability, tourism and food ecosystem, entrepreneurship, energy, transport, legal services and European affairs.

EURAKOM has been instrumental to the development of sustainable regional tourism flagship projects such as Tropicalia, the world’s largest sustainable Greenhouse, or the successful bid for European Region of Gastronomy of Hauts-de-France in 2019/2020 and others. For large-scale projects and activities, EURAKOM works with a cross sectoral bottom-up approach to maximise impact and ensure project uptake and success. We are a passionate advocate for integrating sustainability into business processes and as a core element in education and employment. We are advising and mentoring businesses on sustainability, successful stakeholder engagement as well as sustainable communication with different audiences.

EURAKOM is a Green Destinations representative for France and Belgium and a member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).

DomSpain is a Training and Consulting Company active on a national and international level.

It offers a variety of services to the public and private sector of Spain and actively participates in international schemes through a well-established network of partners abroad. DomSpain is engaged in the EU Pact for Skills. In the VET sector, the Training department of DomSpain focus on ICT, foreign languages, employability, and work-based learning. In the tourism field, together with partners from 8 EU countries, DomSpain developed a COSME project “Visits4U”, aimed at delivering an inclusive tourism training and promoting capacity building to improve user experience through the development of the materials in easy-read format and Sign Language videos: www.visits4u.eu

Currently, DomSpain is involved in the Erasmus+ Guide Me Green project, focusing on the development of tourism immersive experiences.

In addition, DomSpain constantly organises campaigns to raise awareness on the importance of cultural heritage and, especially, making it accessible and inclusive for all.

NTB – “Nicosia Tourism Board, a non-profit private organisation, was established in 2007 with the mission to enhance and promote the city and peripheral area of Nicosia (Cyprus) as a tourist and business destination.

Its main objectives include the development and promotion of Nicosia in four main areas: Cultural tourism, paying particular attention to cultural heritage, creative tourism, religious and culinary tourism, conferences, incentive and business tourism and wellness and sports tourism.

Nicosia Tourism Board places special emphasis in presenting good practises from across the Europe to its partners and stakeholders, encourage the development of new products and services and take measures for improving policy instruments. Currently, Nicosia Tourism Board concentrates its efforts on developing digital tools and maximise the use of the emerging technologies to strengthen visitor experiences.

The Municipality of Tivat is a local self-government. Tivat is a coastal city in Montenegro, located in the central part of the Bay of Kotor. Tivat is the fastest growing municipality in Montenegro utterly dedicated towards the development of tourism.

The municipality maintains close contacts with cities and countries in the region and worldwide and it is an active member of the Adriatic Euro-region, and EURO-DISTRICT, aiming at joint participation and activities related to applying for projects to receive funds from IPA pre-accession assistance funds. Within the framework of cross-border cooperation activities, the Municipality of Tivat applied with many projects in the field of energy efficiency, culture, sustainable development and protection of the sea and the environment, as well as improving social protection, employment and youth policies.

LANARA Consulting is a Slovenian based consultancy focusing on the tourism industry (DMO’s, regional development agencies, tourist providers, students of tourism and hospitality). The company is focusing its business on five pillars, namely:

Tourism development and marketing strategies,
Branding and Marketing Communications,
Tourism experience design,
Vocational training for employees in the tourism industry, and
Gastronomy Tourism.

Lanara Consulting is currently executing bigger projects successfully, since it has a broader team of co-workers based on established long-term cooperation partnerships with other SMEs.

The University of Aveiro is a Portuguese university, founded in 1973, enrolling over 15000 full-time students (in graduate and postgraduate programmes), including about 15% international students every year from a range of over 80 countries. The University includes about 1000 Professors and researchers, and 600 administrative and technical staff. Moreover, the University has a strong research profile and a solid experience of cooperation and projects with local stakeholders.

Recently, in 2019 the University of Aveiro, under the scope of ECIU, became one of the few selected European higher education institutions to pioneer the development of an innovative model of higher education programmes on a European scale. This new international endeavour aims to create a European University, a project that represents a paradigm shift for HEI and the sets up to adopt new teaching and learning models that are more responsive to industry and society challenges.

In the specific domain of tourism, it is important to highlight that the University of Aveiro has pioneered in the higher education landscape with the creation of Tourism Management programmes for graduate and post graduate level. Currently the University attracts a significant share of international students for its post-graduation and research activities in tourism.