The COVID-19 crisis particularly and severely affected tourism worldwide, causing an economic crisis that was expected to have a long recovery period, especially in Europe, as tourism was one of the pillars of the European economy. In response, the entire tourism industry had to adapt to new health protocols to provide safe destinations, services and experiences for tourists, so that the tourism sector would meet these requirements.

At the same time, this crisis accelerated the digitization of the tourism sector, as tourism SMEs had to embrace their digital transformation and improve the digital skills of their workers to increase their resilience and competitiveness.

Finally, given that tourism had one of the highest rates of labor mobility across Europe, it was important to establish transnational training programs to homogenize digital skills and safety protocols for tourism workers across Europe. To this end, the MINDS project focused on 2 countries (Spain and Czech Republic), designing and implementing training programs for tourism workers across Europe.