Tourism training and skills – a more skilled workforce in the tourism sector helps to create a positive visitor experience and adds to the success of a destination and its economic performance.  A key challenge for destinations and operators in the tourism industry is to ensure that the sector has the skills and people to sustain economic growth and development. People and skills affect the bottom line and improving skills levels is key to improving productivity.

Stakeholders in the tourism sector need to ensure that everyone working in tourism and its related sectors has the skills and attitude to provide visitors a warm welcome and enjoyable and interesting stay, to add positively to every visitor’s experience.

It is recognised that traditionally the tourism sector does not have a strong image as a career choice. In terms of recruitment and retention, actions must be taken to dispel the image that the tourism and hospitality sector is a low pay, low skill employment option.

Raising standards of professionalism is a challenge and an industry-led commitment to improvement and training to increase productivity is central to successful destination wide tourism initiatives. It is important to promote a learning culture across the tourism industry, influence training providers and improve the image of tourism as a job and career.

In Planning Solutions Consulting’s experience of developing training strategies and visions for skills there are a number of issues which may be faced:

Tourism training and skills – building industry consensus
Whatever industry skills standards is developed, its success will be determined by the buy-in and commitment of partners and industry to a coherent skills standards that provides entry routes, professional recognition and career development pathways.

Tourism training and skills during an economic downturn
Despite the tourism sector needing a more qualified and skilled workforce, public spending cuts during the economic downturn will have an impact on subsidised training and skills programmes. As far as training is concerned, this will mean that employers will be asked to contribute more from their own budgets to develop their staff. There is a practical role to ensure that the proposed skills and training programmes demonstrate added value for employers.

Tourism training and skills – commercial support / sponsors / champions
It may be possible to attract one or more key figures from within the hospitality sector to become a champion or corporate sponsor for destination wide training initiatives and it is important to identify potential commercial sponsors.

Tourism training and skills – engagement
The development of a successful skills vision for tourist destinations is dependent upon a number of factors, including engagement. A skills vision needs to be based upon the needs of operators and frontline employees and as such a key element is to engage with all stakeholders.

Tourism training and skills – support
To find out more about skills, training and tourism please contact Richard Linington – richard@pslplan.co.uk or call 07866 742628