Tourism is one of Europe’s largest economic sectors providing approx. 27 million jobs and growing by another 100,000 new jobs per year. Especially for less developed areas, tourism seems to be the only hope for economic development.However, at the same time Europe’s tourism is a sensitive and problematic sector facing severe challenges such as:• quickly changing demands and needs of the markets causing quickly changing job profiles• increasing competition from growing tourism markets all over the world• suffering from direct negative impact by the economic crisis• rapid changes of ethical requirements demanding environmental protection and cultural heritage approaches by so called “sustainable tourism”; nevertheless, this concept is too little developed and known in Europe• additionally, (sustainable) tourism is suffering from a shortage of professional staff, with prospects moving from bad to worse• although continuous professional development would be crucial in the touristic economic sector, neither employers nor employees are usually keen to participate in VET activitiesOne approach for overcoming this situation could be the utilization of already existing knowhow, expertise and training programmes developed by the EC. The ADAM database lists more than 200 such projects, and another 400 can be found at EVE, EST and E.N.T.E.R. However, most of these projects are too unknown and they are mostly not connected with each other.Therefore, PESTO will:• screen all tourism projects in the ADAM database plus other databases provided they have a strong VET and labour market approach• select 20 best practice projects (at least 75% must come from LdV)• present these projects in a 2 days thematic dissemination conference in Graz (AT) • publish a magazine and a video clip promoting the selected projects throughout Europe• Give all(!) screened projects the possibility to present and link with each other on our project website