This paper describes a specific situation where the involvement of a Higher Education Institution (HEI), the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB) acted as a booster for region-al competitiveness. The HEI implemented a project named “creation of business coopera-tion networks in rural cross-border regions between companies in the gourmet agri-food and tourism sectors”, with the Portuguese acronym CRECEER, The main objective of this project was to develop and implement measures to increase the companies’ competitive-ness, by enhancing certain areas, such as quality, design, Information and Communication Technologies (ITC), and marketing, along with the creation of a common framework that jointly commercialized products and services, specifically from rural accommodation enterprises and companies producing endogenous products with gourmet potential. It is our intention to describe the activities developed by the HEI involved in the implementa-tion of the project, and to show the crucial part the education institution took in the crea-tion and enhancement of online marketing strategies, in two regions, Douro and Alto Trás-os-Montes (Portugal), that include a total of 28 municipalities.
