FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOW -SKILLED MARINA WORKERS IN ALICANTE

Tourism in general is important to Europe, in terms of employment, economic growth, development and socio-economic integration. Coastal and river tourism in particular is the fastest growing tourism sector in Europe and includes a diverse range of businesses.
Further growth in coastal tourism, however, requires improved education and training for its workers. One of the European priorities is to improve the skills of the workforce, especially those with low levels of education, and it is particularly important to address their learning needs and enhance their general employability. Partly because coastal tourism tends to be seasonal, many workers are low-skilled and much less likely to speak a foreign language than the better-educated permanent employees. There are two major obstacles to fulfilling this need. One is that employer-provided training for low-skilled workers is often very basic and rarely involves foreign language learning. The other is that most adult learning opportunities are both aimed at and taken up by people who have higher level education and skills.
In this paper we will analyse the situation of La Costa Blanca (Alicante, Spain) by describing firstly, the business types and activities offered in the marine tourism and secondly, the current language learning opportunities for low skilled workers in the area. This research was done under the framework of the European project “MARINA – Meeting the language and skills needs of coastal and river tourism workers” (2009-1-NO1-LEO05-01015) co-financed by the European Commission.