CROSSBENCH

Project summary

“Benchmarking” as a process represents the search for best practices in a particular branch of industry, regardless of national borders. It is based on comparing its own dimension with comparative enterprise (the enterprise that represents correlated value). Because of that “benchmarking” approach represents a significant added value and a competitive advantage for the future of entrepreneurship in the cross border area. Specific cross-borders objective of the project were creating dynamic cross-border area of cooperation between hotel enterprises and mutual comparison of business in the form of financial and other indicators with the aim of achieving greater economic development of hotel industry in Croatia and Slovenia, and development of entrepreneurship in the tourism industry in general. Other specific objectives were: increasing the competitiveness of hotels in the program area through applied knowledge and researching results as innovative usage of ICT tools; creating joint methodology for gathering financial and other data for Croatian and Slovenian hotels; enhancement of measuring systems in hotels through realization of cooperation with educational-research institutions; increasing the level of specific knowledge and competences about tracking hotel business and comparison with competition (benchmarking analysis) among hotel management; creating conditions for further cooperation and exchange of good practices between Croatian and Slovenian hotels. Cooperation of project partners (scientific institutions, main professional association, and tourism chamber) which represents important stakeholders of development of entrepreneurship and tourism in both countries is a quality base for future joint activities for the benefit of the entire cross-border area and higher competitiveness of hotels as target groups. In that particular way, entrepreneurship as an element and tourism as an activity are encouraged, so co-financing from the European union had a positive effect on the development of the program area. Main project outputs included: one day workshops for target group informing; bilingual methodology; specific program software; bilingual manual; consultations for hotels; specialized workshops; workshops for hotel employees; bilingual project website; scientific/ professional articles; final conference of the project.