The programme is promoted by the Creative Territories and Tourism of Portugal and involves a total of 40 mentors.

Participants will receive training and mentoring from tourism specialists, entrepreneurs, investors and academics during an online boot camp whose operations centre is in Alvaiázere, in the District of Leiria.

According to a press release, the start-ups “were selected among more than one hundred candidates made up of entrepreneurs from all over the country, including some who are run by people who are still students attending university”.

The executive chairman of The Creative Territories, a consulting and entrepreneurship support company that organises the ‘Green Up’ for the Tourism of Portugal programme, explains that “it was planned that the two days of ‘boot camp’ would be in person in Alvaiázere”.

However, the evolution of the pandemic in Portugal and the rules of the state of emergency forced the organisation “to ask the 66 entrepreneurs involved and their 40 mentors to remain in their offices and in their homes throughout the action,” says Luís Matos Martins.

Luís Matos Martins points out that the Interior of Portugal “has increased its competitiveness as a tourism region since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has validated a historical demand in terms of tourism and restoration, contrary to what happens in traditional tourist areas”. For the Executive President of the Creative Territories, “this competitiveness has to be directed at encouraging people to stay in their regions of origin by helping to accelerate the local economy, creating new opportunities in the tourism sector”, which the ‘Green Up’ programme will help to develop.