About the Project

The project aims to enhance innovation capacity in tourism as a strategic component of competitiveness in order to improve Serbia’s TTDI index, following the European Tourism Agenda 2030, which promotes data-sharing initiatives in tourism, especially those related to innovation. Serbia has significant tourism potential due to its natural resources (landscape, climate, mineral springs, ecosystem), cultural and historical heritage, events and other sources of tourism demand, but this potential is underutilised. According to the Travel & Tourism Development Index (TTDI) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for 2024, Serbia ranks 68th position and thus the fourth last among European countries, just ahead of North Macedonia (87), Moldova (88) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (90). Thus, as an EU candidate country, Serbia falls far behind the EU member states in tourism competitiveness.

The project will enable innovation-driven, sustainable tourism development by engaging stakeholders in the tourism ecosystem to share a wide range of innovative tourism practises through an open innovation tourism network, which will be formed in Vrnjačka Banja, one of the most visited tourism destinations in Serbia. Open innovation provides access to external sources of knowledge, skills, ideas and solutions that are beneficial for various tourism businesses, especially entrepreneurs and SMEs that dominate the tourism industry and often lack the resources to capitalize on new opportunities in the very dynamic tourism market. Through an open innovation network, tourism stakeholders gain access to intellectual capital that they lack, such as human, structural and relational capital. Partners from the V4 countries, which are much better positioned (Poland (27), Czech Republic (33) and Hungary (37)), are invited to support the formation of such a network by sharing the know-how of tourism networks in their countries. The project task is to lead the shift towards the open innovation paradigm by helping stakeholders to open up their boundaries, overcome scepticism and hesitation and build a network based on trust and commitment.

The project will provide the necessary framework and incentive for the formation of an open innovation network. An open innovation platform will be used and managed by the Faculty of Hotel Management and Tourism in Vrnjačka Banja to involve all relevant and interested parties, overcome time and space barriers and enable fast communication and idea/solutions finding. Through its visibility, the platform aims to achieve impact and sustainability, while engaging academic staff and students as active network participants and co-creators of tourism innovation. The platform will support the creation of an ecosystem that facilitates collaboration and co-innovation. Previous literature in this area shows that managing an open innovation network can be a major challenge, especially in an online environment. The task of the project partners is therefore to support and facilitate the initial interactions in order to stimulate participants’ interest in collaborating, which will be achieved by organising an innovation hackathon. The benefit for all participants, whether they come from academia or industry, would be the knowledge, experience and innovation spillover that will promote the sustainable tourism development of the individual countries and Europe as a whole. The expected results are economic benefits resulting from innovations in tourism, as well as the development of network, contributing to cooperation and social sustainability.

The Open Innovation Tourism Network is not limited to participants from Vrnjačka Banja or Serbia, but could well benefit from the inclusion of interested parties from other former Yugoslav countries with similar cultural backgrounds and better TTDI rankings (e.g. Slovenia (42), Croatia (46) and Montenegro (60)). It is expected that the model will be replicated in other countries in the region in order to improve the competitiveness of tourism and thus sustainable economic and social development. This would be particularly beneficial for countries with a lower TTDI ranking, such as North Macedonia (87) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (90). The sustainability of the project is reflected in the interaction of stakeholders after the completion of the project, leading to knowledge spillover and expected growth of the platform from a destination to a regional one, as well as its replication in other destinations. Moreover, the V4 partners will also benefit from the knowledge sharing and the experience created by the project, and the possibility to use the platform.