A major challenge for any organization, which happens once in many years, is related to business succession. Given the specificity of the tourism industry, the takeover of a business depends on the managerial capacity of successor. Leadership is considered one of the key success factors in the businesses and therefore of their transformation. Leadership is also very important when we talk about the relationship between the members of the organization and motivating staff within them. This paper proposes to establish which are the appropriate leadership key skills, competence and knowledge for micro and small enterprises managers, for successfully taking over enterprises, within Europe’s tourism industry. For a clear picture about leadership competences, we considered the following key characteristics: management successors set an exemplary standard to co-workers and give directions both professionally and personally, management successors implement the necessary changes, management successors are open minded to new ideas and know how to assess risks, management successors check compliance of colleagues with professional, social and quality oriented standards, management successors are giving feedback and support personal development, management successors resolve conflict with and between co-workers. The secondary objective of the paper is to test correlation between leadership knowledge, skills and competences for successful business succession. To achieve these objectives, we analysed and interpreted partial results of a quantitative research, based on an online questionnaire. The results of this research can constitute a foundation to further policy papers for the business environment in European tourism.