Interreg South Baltic Programme 2021-2027

The project addresses difficulties in attracting qualified labour as one of the key challenges faced by the South Baltic area and tackled by the Programme with its long term objective to increase the share of skilled labour force working in blue and green economy sectors. This challenge is especially acute in the seaside tourism industry, which has a long-lasting reputation of a low-skilled, low-paid job sector. Such a situation in this job sector is also pertinent to another key challenge, that of the mismatch of education and the needs of employers in knowledge-intensive services in the South Baltic area where flexible and responsible tourism services play an ever-increasing role.
The main challenge addressed by the QUISST project is a lack of qualified labour force in the sustainable seaside tourism sector, especially of highly skilled destination managers which are aware of sustainable development issues in seaside destinations and capable of their successful management. This challenge is directly related to the aforementioned challenges of the Programme and the South Baltic area, and provides an opportunity to facilitate professional restructuring and increasing competitiveness of the South Baltic seaside tourism industry.
There is a necessity for the proposed seed money project to develop the future large-scale project because the challenges and issues addressed by the project are complicated and complex, involving target groups and expertise holders of very different kind, situations varying greatly from country to country, and even from seaside destination to destination within the same country. In order to address the challenges properly and efficiently, concerted efforts in all the South Baltic coastal areas are necessary, and these can be achieved only with the help of a lengthy and dedicated preparatory planning and joint cross-border action. Hence the need for a Seed Money project.