Abstract:

The tourism industry is known for its high volatility in face of changes in the global context. Whether minor or completely disruptive, these changes, as is the case of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, continuously challenge the sector to find new ways of reinventing itself and, even more so, of attracting, retaining, and qualifying its workforce. In fact, in addition to the widely documented gap between market needs and educational programmes, recent global changes have stressed some of the least attractive features of tourism jobs, with many destinations and tourism organizations currently facing a high shortage of human resources, and even more so, with professionals lacking the so-called 21st century skills.

Accordingly, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are increasingly encouraged to provide students with opportunities to develop a new set of skills, which are expected to meet the current and future market demands. Both technical and soft skills need to be analysed in the context of these new trends and requirements, which calls for the design of new programmes and the adoption of more active, student-centred methodologies. Also imperative is the need to align pedagogical methodologies with the educational goals that each student must accomplish, allowing for a more personalized learning journey which, at the end, should result in better qualified and more motivated professionals.

All these premises emphasize the importance of collaboration, namely between schools and tourism organizations, encompassing different approaches to ‘on-the-job’ training initiatives, stimulating the development of effective ‘win-win’ solutions.

The research paper aims to present the results of a focus group discussion which occurred in the context of the IN_SPIRE Project (Sharing Best Practices in Tourism Education), with the purpose of identifying the key skills for the industry and the domains in which university-industry collaboration can contribute to the development of such skills. The results point to the relevance of emotional intelligence as a pivotal skill for tourism professionals, as well as to the opportunity to establish innovative collaborative projects.

Keywords:

Tourism Higher Education, 21st Century Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Experiential Learning, Collaboration.