LTB is participating in several projects of the Erasmus+ programme of the EU as part of its efforts to facilitate and improve the tourism industry and tourism experience.

The partner meetings for two of the projects; ‘Rural Women’s Club’ and ‘Go For Vet in Erasmus+’ were held in Larnaka at the start of October, whilst a new project ‘MAAS' (Match, Attain and Sustain: New Methods for Europe’s Job Brokers Supporting Tourism Businesses, Ukrainian Refugees and Job Seekers) commenced with its kick-off meeting at the start of October. 

The ‘Rural Women’s Club’ is a project aimed at supporting women in rural communities and their pivotal role in preserving and practicing local traditions, with an emphasis on gastronomy. LTB is participating for Cyprus alongside the Women’s Association of Rural Larnaka (WARL); a collective of women from Larnaka region’s village and mountain communities who are active in keeping handmade traditions (gastronomy and handicrafts) alive, and also organise the annual ‘Festival of Tradition and Culture’ each October. 

Project partners from Poland and Greece visited Larnaka for the meet, and their local women’s groups participated in the ‘Festival of Tradition and Culture’ presenting their own unique products based on the traditions of their respective countries and regions. The project allows the women’s groups to share their customs and best practices with one another and compare the culture of each partner country, with the project materials including a guide on how rural women’s clubs benefit and enrich the communities they operate in. During their visit to Larnaka region, the project partners toured rural villages and participated in cooking workshops. 

The second meeting hosted in Larnaka was ‘Go For Vet in Erasmus+’. The project involves five partners from Cyprus, Greece, Poland and Finland, working together to strengthen the potential of VET providers to implement vocational international traineeships under Erasmus + (2021-2027).

The partnership will achieve this by developing and implementing new learning agreement programmes for four professions – with LTB responsible for the tourism industry - as well as the development of recommendations and good practices in the field of inclusion of students with a disability into international vocational mobility projects.

Whilst in Larnaka, the partners met with several tourism industry and tourism education figures to discuss how potential internships can work and how to best prepare the environment for disabled interns and international interns, as well as meeting with staff at St Barnabas School for the Blind and Larnaka Municipality to discuss the employment of persons with disabilities in Cyprus in general. The site visits were the second set since the project commenced, with the first taking place in Poland in June.

During the same period, the kick-off meeting for MAAS took place. The project’s main topic is meeting the labour market needs of the tourism sector via the training of intermediaries (employment counsellors), with a parallel topic of emphasising support for Ukrainian refugees as part of the job seekers the project aims to engage. LTB is participating with partners from Greece, Spain, Norway, Poland and Iceland. The project deliverables will include a multilingual eGuide for the MAAS method; a cloud platform that allows the management of people and tasks with an interactive approach to delivering a specific task or job. 

These projects are in addition to the ongoing projects and those that are finishing this autumn.

ESTour is currently in its second year and at the stage that the training material for the ESTour advisors (advisors for hotel health and safety protocols) is complete. The 4th Transnational Meeting of Partners and Learning Activity took place in Larissa, Greece in July, whereby those who will deliver the ESTour training material in their countries were familiarised with the ESTour Modular Curriculum to be delivered through a blended-learning VET methodology. The project will complete at the end of 2024 and is comprised of nine partners (including LTB) from Cyprus, Greece, Sweden, Italy Spain and Poland. 

Also continuing with its actions is QUEST, which aims to increase higher education students’ employability in the tourism and cultural heritage management sector, whilst DTour and Time4AC are very successfully concluding and will offer project results with lasting benefits.