<< Background >>The tourism sector has a significant and increasing role in the EU economic performance. Along with its strengthening, some new directions appeared recently. In parallel with the growing role of short domestic travels, offbeat destinations became more important against mass tourism ones. The highlighted tendencies raise the need of new approaches. The first one of these is the community-based ecotourism.In the existing agendas, regional tourism is mostly connected to individual attractions, while the growing need on community-based tourism has less attention. Even if it is a core element of local population retention and welfare, the complex development of the community through tourism – over some valuable initiatives - is out of the tourism development initiatives. Community-based ecotourism should emphasize the development of local communities and allow for residents to have substantial control over, and involvement in, its development and management, and a major proportion of the benefits should remain within the community. Community-based ecotourism should foster sustainable use and collective responsibility, but it also should embrace individual initiatives within the community. Additionally, it is essential that approaches to community-based ecotourism projects are a part of a larger community development strategy and carefully planned with community members. The second one is the role of the new regional destinations.Among the wide range of tourism destinations, offbeat ones – mostly in hidden rural areas – have increasing role in European countries (European Agenda for Tourism 2050). Their growing importance directly relates to the breakthrough of regional tourism against long distance one. The offbeat destinations give the opportunity of different tourism types, like agrotourism, ecotourism, geotourism, rural tourism, responsible tourism as well as special interest tourism. All of them are good ground for helping local communities and the environment, while supporting climate neutral tourism.Even though regional community-based tourism (with offbeat destinations) is indicated in EU and territorial strategies as an efficient driver of tourism industry, its development following a greener and more digital approach is not a standard component of the related agendas. Additionally, while circular economy has central focus in local economic development, the circular tourism approach is rarely used. Finally, regional tourism is mostly run by family or micro businesses on the hosts’ and suppliers’ side. They are well experienced in their traditional tourism business, however, need further skills and competences on the acceleration of their services through the approach of community-based circular tourism.As of the preliminary territorial analysis made during preparation phase of the project, tourism hosts, operators, and suppliers (as learners) as well as their supporting organizations (as educators) have no competences and skills to adapt circular tourism principle to address community-based development. The combination of missing competences is currently not part of the adult education curricula and need the integration of new learning elements and methodologies. The partnership decided to join its forces to offer a a valuable solution to increase competences of tourism staff to successfully face these challanges.<< Objectives >>Following the given needs, RE-CONNECT has identified a clear need to accelerate the competence and skill development of community-based tourism in offbeat destinations by implementing a greener and more digital development approach to assure more sustainable tourism along circular tourism approach. The solution offered by RE-CONNECT is to address the given needs and challenges by developing and implementing a toolkit on competence and behaviour development on circular tourism for local communities. Especially tourism labour force at operators, local SMEs, NGOs, suppliers, and local government, as well as tourists are planned to be involved. •Being in line with the priorities of environmental sustainability and climate goals as well as digital transformations, the project aims to increase the competences of local tourism communities on greener and more digital tourism products and services by:•Developing a viable interregional digital ecosystem of local tourism communities along circular tourism.•Increasing the readiness and competences of tourism labour force on climate neutral tourism at offbeat destinations.•Developing a knowledge base to accelerate to co-create new innovative products and services<< Implementation >>RE-CONNECT partnership is going to implement the following activities:1. Development of a circular tourism collaborative HUB - a platform for climate neutral tourism solutions, cooperation and knowledge sharing. The HUB is dedicated to local tourism staff (hosts, suppliers, operators) to share their experience, challenges and best working practices within a common network. The interactive hub will provide an online environment where tourism and tourism development staff could meet, seek guidance, exchange knowledge and share ideas, concerns and valuable information related to circular tourism development. The online hub will form an integral part of the much-needed online basis for a strong and supportive regional tourism community and network.2. Competence development for greener and more digital tourism. As one of the core project result, by adapting the elements of the existing training programmes of the project partners, a circular tourism training curriculum of offbeat destinations will be developed and tested. From the content related perspective, the training development and implementation will focus on the following topics: Sustainable tourism offers, Selection, planning and booking through a sustainable process, Green transport, Sustainable stay and services (green & safe accommodation, local consumption, waste sorting), Circular tourism development opportunities (stressing on digital solutions). 3. Co-creation pack development on circular tourism. A knowledge pack (guidebook) will be developed on how to accelerate circular tourism projects, products or services through co-creation. All stages of co-creation will be covered with the final goal to offer better tourism services in the involved areas. The co-creation pack will be also tested (through the collaborative hub) and 3 interregional product/service development projects will be qualified.4. Over the main project results, a set of trainings, as well collaborative, learning by doing competnece development activities will be implemented, with extensive involvment of all stakeholders of the tourism ecosystem of offbeat destination.<< Results >>The main result of the project will be 1) dissemination of climate neutral tourism in offbeat destinations; 2) acceleration of the economic potential of rural areas; 3) spreading of green and digital solutions in less favoured areas; 4) significant competence development of the target group.The expected main results are:•Set of digital tools (hub, training curriculum, co-creation pack) on climate neutral tourism products and services•Developed interregional network along circular tourism•3 interregional co-creation-based competence development projects implemented on a learning by doing base and certified with the quality certificate•Learning interactions through staff exchange (within bootcamps for at least 5 participants form each partner regions)•200+ regional tourism hosts, suppliers, service providers trained from 10 countriesBesides this, some more results are created: - In all participating countries the development and the implementation will be carried out to test all PRs outputs. - Each partner will organize one multiplier event. The goal is to promote the developed competence and skill development tools to different target groups, the project's outputs and results achieved as well as importance of promoting and boosting circular tourism at offbeat destinations. - The results under dissemination activity are: dissemination plan, visualization and promotion materials, project website, social media pages and 4 e-newsletters. Additionally, RE-CONNECT partnership will attend to 6 external events/fairs to promote project results.