In January 2024 Stanislav Ivanov and Corné Dijkmans participated in the annual ENTER conference. For three decades, the ENTER e-Tourism conference has served as a convergence point for the Tourism and IT sectors, educational institutions, governmental bodies, and various organizations. ENTER provides an unparalleled global platform for engaging in active discussions, sharing insights, and evaluating contemporary research and industrial case studies related to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the travel and tourism sector.
In a special panel dedicated to the AI impact on tourism education, participants discussed whether AI is an ally or an enemy for those studying tourism and hospitality. The use of generative AI undoubtedly will change the foundation of the education system, but it will also bring new benefits for the students. For example, the use of AI may develop digital and analytical skills, while social and transversal skills remain as a must for everybody in the field of services and hospitality. In this regard, the ability to work with AI becomes an important part of the digital skills set of every educational and training institution.
Colleagues of the Pantour consortium; Federturismo Confindustria and Ruraltour went to Singapore to moderate the BILT sessions, focusing on solutions for the digital and green transition in Singapore. What are the digital and green skills we need in the future of tourism? The conference entitled “Hybrid BILT Bridging Event – TVET for Hospitality and Tourism: Solutions for the Digital and Green Transition”, was the first on-site Bridging Event of the BILT project in the Asia-Pacific region. It provides a platform for outlining trends in green and digital qualifications and competencies, with a focus on the hospitality and tourism sector.
It’s the European Year of Skills and currently, we love to hear your opinion on skills needs in the tourism sector of the future! The PANTOUR project has dedicated special attention to the reskilling and upskilling of the generic workforce on future skills needs. This is why a European Wide Skills Survey has been prepared to investigate whether a gap exists between current levels of skills in the tourism industry and the future skills needed in 2030. As one of our valuable community connections, we kindly request your cooperation in filling out this survey and sharing your knowledge with us. This will allow us to get a deeper insight into
(1) the current state of affairs in skills development and
(2) provide us with your views on the future prospects of these skills.
Your input is highly appreciated. The link to the survey which is expected to take approximately 10-12 minutes, can be found here: Tourism Skills survey 2023
The Pantour project (follow up of the Next Tourism Generation project (NTG)) needs to prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs, educators and workers in tourism for upcoming changes and opportunities in the tourism industry. Developments in previously separate areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D printing, and blockchain technology are now joining forces and amplifying one another. The impact of this will be visible in the coming years and affect European societies, industries, jobs, and amounts of free time. The Pantour desk research has been completed and is now followed-up by the distribution of the European Wide Skills Survey.
The first desk research- phase of the NTG Skills Alliance project ended in Spring 2023. This provided extensive insight into the current skills situations in the partner countries. Main trends, which will influence future skills for tourism were also identified and has led to the content of the NTG Skills survey. The secondary data report will be published in February. This online survey aims to:
Explore if a gap exists between current awareness and levels of digital and sustainability skills in the business field of Tourism and what skills are needed in 2030.
In this way, it will become clear what knowledge and which products and tools are required in order to prepare the Next Tourism Generation for the level of skills in the tourism field.
The online survey will be distributed among the five tourism sub-sectors: hospitality, food & beverage, visitor attractions, destination management and tour operators and travel agencies. We would like to invite all tourism employers in these sub-sectors to participate in the NTG Skills survey. The explanation and link to the survey can be found below.
This survey is of high relevance for tourism businesses in order to map the importance of digital, social and green skills for tourism businesses in the EU now and in the future. The NTG alliance holds a mirror towards the industry itself, to act strategically towards our future generation of tourism stakeholders, professionals and students in view of serving our customers.
The survey consists out of three counter parts:
The survey encourages respondents – employers in tourism and hospitality sub-sectors – to review their organizations in terms of sustainability skills, capacities to engage with customers and fellow professionals regarding sustainability in the tourism field and finally, the digital capacity of employees in organizations will be investigated.
By completing the survey, you will support the progress of Pact for Next Tourism Generation Skills. The insights, which will be derived in the upcoming weeks, will be used to enforce the tourism sector to be future-proof in the EU. As a result of the survey employers, (future) employees and educators will work more collaboratively based on the optimized skills sets.
The Pantour project keep all sectors informed through the established networks of the partners.
Follow the efforts of the Pantour via our website, Facebook, Twitter | or via LinkedIn
After the European Tourism Day on May 5 in Brussels, the European Commission hosted another relevant event for all industries working on skills development: The European Year of Skills Festival on May 9. Learning skills are a life long journey and this European Year of Skills will help industries and companies, educational institutions and governments to address skills shortages in the EU. We are proud that in this year and the upcoming years, PANTOUR will contribute to the discussion on what is needed in tourism to equip the tourism workforce with the skills they need to reach their full potential.
During this panel, we seek to discuss with a solution focused approach the emergence of initiatives to attract and retain staff in tourism and hospitality across Europe. In a joint event organised by the Pantour Consortium and the Pact for Skills for Tourism (PfST), which also promotes joint action through the establishments and implementation of large-scale skills partnerships at national, regional and local levels.
Some of the questions that arise are, how could we potentialise the industry by promoting solutions to address staff shortages? And what initiatives are happening on the groudn? This panel seeks to prpvide an overview of initiatives and case studies to address the shortage of staff in the sector.
The session is free to join online, click here to join the meeting.
We are delighted to invite you to our first PANTOUR webinar – Pact for Next Tourism Generation Skills on 9 February, 2023. Want to learn everything about our research on current and future skills needs in tourism, conducted in the last months? Make sure you join this webinar and get more information on how to be ahead of the developments while participating in PANTOURs project activities that are planned for the upcoming years.
In June 2022, the Tourism Blueprint Strategy was delivered to the European Commission by the Next Tourism Generation Alliance (NTG). It was the result of more than four years of work and research about skills and training in the tourism sector in Europe. This strategy stated how to promote skills development in order to achieve better tasks development in any job position. As it was discovered, the same skills are used for different tasks and allow professionals to develop different job positions. This way, professionals must be trained on skills while they will be taught in operational tasks in their positions. From this point, a new project was submitted to an ERASMUS+ call, “Pact for Next Tourism Generation Skills – PANTOUR.
Building on previous work by the European Commission and sectoral partners to address skills gaps in tourism, the NTG Alliance is one of the Sector Skills Alliances set up as part of the Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills. Each Sector Skills Alliance is funded by the European Commission Erasmus + KA2 programme and was tasked with setting up a Blueprint to help direct the way forward for skills development across a wide range of stakeholders. Thus, the NTG Alliance has developed the first Pan-European Skills Blueprint for the Tourism Industry, presented in this document. The Blueprint provides a roadmap for addressing digital, social and green skill needs in the tourism sector in Europe through transformational collaboration between industry, education, social partners and government.
This Blueprint sets out a comprehensive methodology to respond to the need for a sectoral skills strategy that is innovative, relevant, and responsive to the current and future skills scenario for the tourism sector. Importantly, it also builds on previous research such as the European Commission’s Tourism Skills Mapping exercises and Panorama Skills in Tourism and work by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training.
Download the full press release here: NTG Press Release Blueprint Strategy Skills Development in Tourism
Download the blueprint here: Final Next Tourism Generation Blueprint Report
The Blueprint document is an output of the Next Tourism Generation (NTG) Alliance, a strategic and multi-layered collaborative partnership formed in 2018. Building on previous work by the European Commission and sectoral partners to address skills gaps in tourism, the NTG Alliance is one of the Sector Skills Alliances set up as part of the Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills. Each Sector Skills Alliance is funded by the Commission and was tasked with setting up a Blueprint.
