The Project

The project “INTERSMARTS: Interdisciplinary Solutions for Smart Sustainable Tourism and Services for Blue Growth in the Black Sea Basin” is a transnational initiative of the Interreg NEXT Black Sea Basin Programme.
The project recognizes the enormous potential of the tourism sector to drive blue growth in the Black Sea region, but also the challenges to harness this potential, mainly related to improving sustainability, making effective use of new knowledge and technologies, and introducing new working models.

Therefore, INTERSMARTS aims to improve the sustainability performance and innovation absorption of tourism and services through interdisciplinary research, networking, co-creation and holistic knowledge generation.
The project proposes to carry out challenge-specific studies, interdisciplinary comprehensive interventions and cross-border applied research, and seeks to change traditional perceptions and raise awareness of the knowledge-intensive nature of tourism within the blue growth framework.
In addition, the initiative seeks to bring together academia, business, government, civil sector and environment in a knowledge economy.

The INTERSMARTS Project will focus its efforts on Core Regions for Innovation across four countries—Bulgaria, Greece, Moldova, and Türkiye. These regions will serve as key hubs for implementing and testing cutting-edge solutions in sustainable tourism and blue growth. They will showcase that smart and knowledge-based solutions can not only raise the sustainability performance but also the quality of the tourism offers and services in the BSB.