IKAT Tourism Call for SMEs in Europe – Financial support for services
The First Call of the IKAT Eurocluster aims to provide solutions that address and are in alignment with the priorities of the European Strategy for more Growth and Jobs in Coastal and Maritime Tourism, as well as to recover pre-pandemic Gross Domestic Product (GDP), contributing to re-establishing broken value chains, collaboration and increasing the resilience of tourism SMEs.
The Call will provide each selected organisation with a financial support in order to purchase services related to the following areas:
- BUSINESS MODEL – €3.000,00
- ACCELERATION – €8.000,00
- OPEN INNOVATION – €10.000,00
- EXPERIENCE IN DIGITAL, SUSTAINABLE, AND INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY – €6.000,00
- FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES – €4.200,00
- INTERNATIONALIZATION – €6.000,00
- TRAINING (including mentoring and seminars for services 1 to 6) – €5.080,00
Applicants must meet all the following requirements:
1. Applicants must be a SME (as defined in the EU Recommendation 2003/361) and declare their SME status in accordance with the SME definition of the European Union.
2. Applicants must be SMEs from the tourism industrial ecosystem. To be eligible for the IKAT call, the main activity of the applicant SMEs must be included under one of the segments of the coastal and maritime tourism sector listed in Annex 3 of the Guide of the Applicants.
3. To be eligible for the IKAT Tourism Call for SMEs in Europe – Financial support for services, an applicant must be an SME established or have a branch office in the IKAT territorial scope, described as follows:
a. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal
b. Other EU-27 countries
c. Countries participating in the Single Market Programme (SMP)
4. Applicants can be either member of one of the IKAT consortium clusters or established or with a branch office in the IKAT territorial scope (Annex 2 of the Guide for Applicants).
5. Applications must be written in English (applications partially written in another language are not eligible) and must not exceed the maximum number of characters stated in each text box of the pre-defined template, which can be found at https://www.ikatproject.com
6. Applicants must submit their application by the deadline of 20 April 2023 at 17.00 (Brussels time).
7. Only applications that are complete with all the requested documents (including the certificate that they have the technical and economic capacity to pre-finance the service) will be considered eligible, as all SMEs selected for funding will be provided with a supporting document indicating that the money the SME paid will be reimbursed after the SME: has received the selected service, submits a signed statement indicating that it has received the service, has paid the cost of the service to the selected provider and submits the invoice(s) with the corresponding proof of payment, as well as the submission of the mandatory satisfaction survey of the service received)
8. To be eligible for this call, the applicant must select three types of services in order of priority and one service provider, for each type of service, from the catalogue of IKAT providers in its country (Annex 4 of the Guide for Applicants). For those SMEs that come from regions of the EU other than the countries and/or regions of the individual IKAT partners that wish to apply as applicants in the call, selecting services to be provided by providers that do not appear in the catalogue, they must prove the technical capacity, quality and necessary experience of the provider(s) chosen to provide the service for which they apply. Only applications where 3 types of services have been selected will be deemed eligible.
All eligible applications will be reviewed against the following evaluation criteria:
Viability (30 points)
Feasibility (30 points)
Invertibility (30 points)
Coherence (5 points)
Impact (5 points)
Further information
For all information about the Call and to download the Guidelines for applicants, please visit:
https://www.ikatproject.com/ikatcall
For queries, please contact: mquesada@clustermc.es; graciela_lingua@hotmail.com (please keep both email addresses in copy)