Scope of the programme

• Countries impacted: Italy, France, Norway and Slovenia under First Mile; Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Lithuania under COASTOUR; Italy at local level under the Bari Chamber of Commerce vouchers.
• Thematic axis: Sustainable tourism, behavioural change, green mobility, sustainability monitoring, SME resilience, tourism competitiveness, quality improvement and internationalisation.
• Funding programme lineage (EU, national, regional): EU and local / regional.

Description of the project

• Project objective(s): To improve the sustainability, competitiveness and long-term resilience of the accommodation business through a progressive combination of behavioural sustainability actions, local community-oriented capacity building, green investment and international visibility measures.
• Duration: 2024 for the Bari Chamber of Commerce vouchers and the COASTOUR participation referenced by the SME; First Mile forms part of a wider project running from 2023 to 2025.
• Main activities: Implementation of behavioural sustainability actions for guests under First Mile; development of pedestrian and mobility-oriented guest materials; participation in COASTOUR with a strong preference for place-based knowledge transfer and practical learning; installation of a solar panel system through Voucher Turismo; and social media advertising and promotional actions through Voucher Internazionalizzazione.
• Outputs: Pedestrian and sustainable mobility maps; improved guest awareness around sustainability; local dissemination of practical knowledge; installation of solar energy infrastructure; and stronger online visibility and market outreach.
• Duration: The funding pathway is best understood as a cumulative sequence of actions implemented during 2024, while also building on the wider First Mile cycle and the SME’s growing experience with public funding.

Type of application

• Single applicant: Yes.
• Consortium members: Not applicable at SME beneficiary level.
• Subcontractor: Not specified as a central feature of the applications; implementation relied mainly on the SME itself and, where relevant, on external service providers linked to the funded activities.

Success Factors

• Access to information: A decisive success factor was the SME owner’s proactive search for opportunities on the web using sustainability-related keywords, which enabled discovery of calls despite limited initial familiarity with formal EU funding portals.
• Strategic fit with call priorities: The business already had a strong sustainability orientation, which made it easier to align proposed actions with the environmental and tourism-transition priorities of the funding schemes.
• Previous experience with funding: Although First Mile was described as the first EU-level application, each subsequent opportunity increased the SME’s confidence, learning and ability to identify and use further schemes.
• Use of support ecosystems: Explanatory sessions and direct clarification from project organisers helped the SME understand the opportunities and reduced the difficulty of first-time participation.
• Team design & resources: The lean structure of the SME enabled fast decision-making and the direct translation of small grants into practical, visible improvements in the business.
• Quality of proposal / practical relevance: The funded actions were concrete, realistic and closely linked to real operational needs of the company, which strengthened the coherence of the applications and implementation.

Barriers & Challenges

• Complexity of the Call: The SME explained that some calls did not clearly specify key practical elements at the outset, such as budget logic, timeframe or level of expected ambition.
• Administrative burden: Local voucher schemes required substantial paperwork, invoicing and reimbursement procedures, making implementation more bureaucratic and time-consuming for a micro enterprise.
• Time & resource constraints: As a very small business, the SME had limited internal capacity to deal with repeated administrative and funding-management requirements.
• Partnership & consortium: The SME highlighted that many EU opportunities are difficult to access because they require international partners or destination structures that are not easily available in its local context.
• Lack of support ecosystem: The interview pointed to the absence of easily accessible trusted partnership ecosystems and structured matchmaking support for small rural tourism actors.
• Trust barrier: The SME also stressed that working with unknown organisations abroad can be difficult because trust and reliability are harder to assess in advance.

Lessons learned

• Start with accessible and relatively small funding instruments, as these can provide the confidence and practical experience needed to progressively engage with more opportunities.
• Funding works best when it is used strategically across several complementary schemes rather than as a one-off isolated opportunity.
• Small grants can generate significant impact when they are tightly connected to real business needs, such as sustainability improvements, visibility actions or energy investments.
• Better information visibility, simpler procedures and stronger partner-search support would make funding more accessible for rural micro tourism enterprises.

This best practice shows how a micro rural tourism SME can build a progressive and coherent funding pathway by combining EU cascade support with local co-financed instruments. Rather than relying on a single grant, B&B Parco Alta Murgia used different opportunities to improve sustainability, strengthen operational capacity, invest in green infrastructure and enhance external visibility. The case represents a practical example of how small tourism businesses can gradually develop funding capability, provided that opportunities are accessible, relevant and closely linked to their real development needs.