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Innoguide 2.0. ‘Guiding as a trigger for a more sustainable, diverse and exciting Europe! Stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of guiding.’
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

In an ever globalizing 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/. A follow-up initiative is needed to develop, based on the feedback we already received from current users, these innovative learning methods and to further contribute to a good quality of guide training in Europe. A second objective of this project is to offer extra support and expertise to guide organisations to manage a profitable, customer-oriented and qualitative organisation. To provide this support this project uses the principles of service design and innovation (SID). This approach results 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. A newly developed self-scan lets guide organisations reflect on how well they currently score in terms of service quality. The ensuing developed instruments help guide organisations 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 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 to a more dynamic and interactive e-platform 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” for guide organisations. - Developing supporting service design based instruments that help the organisations improve their service quality For this project a diverse partner consortium is 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 (DATE, Denmark), Laurea (Finland) and Drustvo Marije Juric Zagorke (Croatia) have engaged themselves to invest in this project. In summary, this project affects all the stakeholders directly involved in the field of guiding, namely guides, guide trainers, guide organisations and ultimately of the tourists. It stresses the importance of a good service quality by promoting a customer and service- oriented perspective for guide organisations, by highlighting the importance of a few key competences for guides and by aiming to increase competitiveness and stimulate further professionalization in the field of guiding. This project thus has the ambition to contribute to the development of sustainable, responsible, innovative and high-quality guided tours in Europe.

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