Lisbeyond completes Cross-Re-Tour Open Innovation Programme

Over the past 14 months, Lisbeyond has delivered N-FORWARD, an innovation project co-funded by the Cross-Re-Tour Open Innovation Programme, an EU initiative supporting tourism SMEs in their green and digital transformation. Managing around 200 short and mid-term rental properties across Lisbon, Porto, Aljezur and the Algarve, we set out to tackle two connected challenges: embedding sustainability into daily operations, and encouraging guests towards eco-conscious choices during their stays.

The project combined behavioural science with low-cost digital tools across eight activities. We established our first evidence-based green and digital baseline with a 12-month KPI roadmap, trained 11 staff in ESG and 13 in behavioural nudge design, launched a digital recruitment platform that generated 117 pre-vetted candidates, and rolled out a learning portal that reached a 94% assessment pass rate. On the guest side, we built a live gamified eco-badge system and co-designed three regenerative experiences with local partners, from beach clean-ups to supporting local producers.

The lasting value here is infrastructure, not one-off outputs: professional tools for talent, training and guest engagement, a shared sustainability language across our team, and a replicable model that other hospitality SMEs can adopt.

None of this happened in isolation. Over 14 months we leaned on people who know things we didn’t, in behavioural science, ESG training and talent platforms, and the project is better for it. So thank you to the Cross-Re-Tour team for backing us through the programme, and to our partners Verimpact, Hosco, Lobster Ink and Odysseas Spyroglou for the work and the good conversations along the way.

Our process manager, Sónia Duarte, represented Lisbeyond at the Cross-Re-Tour Show & Share event in Malta this past April, presenting our results to the wider programme community. She came back with more than good feedback. Lisbeyond’s work was warmly recognised by peers and partners in the room, and Sónia herself picked up new ideas and approaches from other SMEs going through similar transformations. She’s already bringing that thinking back into how we work in Portugal.

The infrastructure is built: the tools, the training, the shared language across our team. Now comes the part we’re actually excited about: watching it translate into real impact, for our guests and for the places we operate in.