Why is it relevant to tourism?
The Digital Europe work programme shapes and supports the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy. Its goal is to support the strategic autonomy of the EU’s single market.
The Digital Europe programme reinforces critical digital capacities by focusing on the key areas of artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, advanced computing, data infrastructure, and governance and processing.
It also assists their deployment and best use in sectors like energy and the environment, manufacturing, agriculture and health. The programme provides strategic support for the digital transformation of the EU industrial ecosystems.
Multi-annual work programmes help implement Digital Europe. There are 4 independent work programmes.
2 cover parts under indirect management (high-performance computing and cybersecurity). The third focuses on the European digital innovation hubs. Finally, the fourth programme covers data, AI, cloud, Euro quantum communication infrastructure (QCI) and skills, in addition to all deployment actions.
Digital Europe will ensure that activities within the various programmes synergise and complement each other.
Budget allocation
The Digital Europe programme distributes its budget of €7.6 billion (in current prices) by allocating
- €2.2 billion to supercomputing
- €2.1 billion to artificial intelligence
- €1.6 billion to cybersecurity
- €580 million for advanced digital skills
- €1.1 billion for ensuring the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society
Most of the programme’s activities require co-investments from the public and private sectors.
The relevant work programmes describe these co-investments in more detail.The EU recovery and resilience facility (RRF), along with contributions from EU, national and regional programmes, foresee several of these activities as significant parts of cross-border or multi-country projects (MCPs). Co-investments from the RRF can therefore contribute to implementing these projects.
Tourism funding criteria
This programme supports the creation of data spaces, with three projects being particularly interesting for the tourism sector.
- 2 coordination and support actions which explore the governance of a future data space for tourism
- The European common data space for cultural heritage supports the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural heritage sector.
- The data space for mobility is key to tourism. So is interoperability. The data spaces for tourism, mobility, cultural heritage and others need to be interoperable.
Moreover, SMEs in the tourism sector can be supported by the network of European digital innovation hubs in their digital transformation.
Programme details
Examples of supported projects
Project Title: DATES – European Tourism Data Space
Description: This project explores approaches and options for deploying a secure and trusted tourism data space to ensure transparent control of data access, use and re-use.
DATES focuses on developing governance and business models. It recommends clear strategies on how to inspire and motivate all key tourism stakeholders to collaboratively build a powerful, interconnected tourism data space. This project is part of the preparatory work for the European Data Space for Tourism.
Project Title: DEPLOYTOUR - Deployment of a European Tourism Data Space
Description: This project focuses on deploying a secure and trusted Common European Tourism Data Space to enable seamless data sharing across the tourism ecosystem.
DEPLOYTOUR brings together a wide range of stakeholders from the tourism and data sectors across Europe. Building on previous preparatory initiatives such as DATES and DSFT, the project aims to implement a robust technical architecture aligned with European frameworks and standards.
The project will demonstrate the value of the data space through five strategic use cases addressing key challenges such as tourism flows, sustainability, and emerging trends.