Smart Cities, Smart Enterprises, Smart Tourism Zone, Smart Province. Responsible cities, responsible companies, responsible tourism area, responsible province. The name of the project sums up the core of the development project. The main purpose of the project is that South Karelia and Saimaa as a tourist area will be known and recognised as a smart and sustainable destination. The project will launch a joint development process for sustainable tourism and intelligence, which will create a readiness and managed career to develop a smart, sustainable and developing tourist area from South Karelia and the entire Saimaa region. Another key objective and objective of the project is to help and promote tourism companies to become successful in competitive markets. Sustainable and smart development work is also carried out in cooperation with South Savo operators in accordance with the spirit of the Saimaa 2020-2025 agreement and also as part of the VisitFinland Lakeland major cooperation. However, the focus of the project is on developing practical tourism together with SMEs in a needs- and customer-oriented way (Action Line 1 and Specific Objective 2.1). Climate change has been identified as the world’s largest environmental risk. We consume resources much faster than they are able to regenerate. The role of tourism as part of the world economy is growing. Climate change will have an impact on the destination of future tourist flows. The most vulnerable to climate change are our weather-dependent tourism products. Curbing requires proactive tourism planning, coordination and management also at regional level, such as product development and marketing communications. The sustainable development of tourism is a strongly rising global trend. According to the UN World Travel Organisation, the development, management and management of regional tourism organisations should take into account all aspects of development, not just marketing. In addition, as part of the management of the tourist area, efforts should be made to encourage all actors to move in the same direction in accordance with common objectives. The operating models must take into account the characteristics of the region, as well as the nature and volume of tourism, for example. The Destination Management Organisation (DMO) must be at the heart of the region’s activities. It coordinates the activities of actors in the tourism ecosystem towards a shared vision and sustainable and competitive tourism. Regional organisations must strengthen their internal know-how and resources in strategic management, effective implementation of measures, management and evaluation of operations.Tourism in the European Union’s third largest sector. Eduardo Santander, Managing Director of the European Travel Commission, therefore calls for better coordination, a strong longer-term strategy and targeted funding from different EU channels for Europe and European regional organisations. It is therefore very legitimate to talk about “Visitor Oy”, the tourist’s economy, where the customer, the tourist, is at the centre. On the one hand, digitalisation underscores the importance of customer and customer experience, on the other hand, digitalisation also increases customers’ expectations and highlights differences between companies. The tourism strategies of South Karelia and Etelä-Savo set the goal of making the Saimaa region one of Finland’s top three tourist areas alongside Helsinki and Lapland. It requires strong collaboration; provinces or sub-regions alone can't do that. Attracting international tourists and increasing international awareness require significant promotional and marketing efforts where pooling of resources will bring significant benefits. This has been established during the first Saimaa contract period that took place in 2017-2019, when a good basis for cooperation has been established. In order to develop and intensify cooperation, the provinces of Saimaa have signed a cooperation agreement on tourism for the period 2020-2025. The project will allow a natural transition from existing projects to the implementation of provincial strategies and the Saimaa 2020-2025 agreement. The project also implements Finland’s new national tourism strategy 2020-2030.SMEs increasingly use various digital services in their business, such as digital marketing services, payment instruments and various platform economy solutions. Consumers have also relocated their activities online. Consumers and business customers look for information, shop and share peer experiences and recommendations on tourism services and products. The benefits of digitalisation for businesses have grown. Companies adopt various e-services, but companies need training, expert assistance, joint experiments, peer support and exchange of experiences for these measures.The regional tourism challenge in the project is to provide answers and ways of working together, based on mass power, to strengthen S