Background
As part of the shift towards nature conservation, many tourist destinations, as well as the people who visit them, are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of tourism on the environment. At the same time, the strengthening of environmental awareness has brought the need to visit less classic tourist destinations, with a high concentration of tourist contents, and locations in nature reserves, far from cities and with clear environmental protection policies are gaining priority. With this in mind, tourist locations are becoming more environmentally friendly and an increasing number of visitors aim to assess the environmental sustainability of hotels and holiday destinations. It has gradually evolved into a movement that favours local culture, destinations in rural areas, preserved nature reserves, and SPAs, rather than mass tourism (OECD Tourism Trends and Policies, 2016). In line with the preferences of consumers of tourist services, the possession of green skills by employees in tourism and hospitality is becoming indispensable. According to EU Commission Skills panorama (2015) environmental awareness skills refer to the knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a society that reduces the impact of human activity on the environment. These generic ‘green’ skills include the capacity to include environmental concerns alongside others (such as performance and safety) in taking decisions, including in the choice of processes and technologies. A special segment of tourism that is the most demanding in terms of required skills is certainly the hotel industry. It is in this sector that green practices are increasingly being developed and implemented, which entails the need for the green skills of employees. The project ESSEFT is designed to tackle down the problem of a skills mismatch in each partner country that rises due to new requirements set in the hotel management and modern requirements from employees in the tourism industry. The project involves the development of short-cycle courses (lasting three months), which would complement the knowledge of work-age adults employed in the field of tourism and hospitality, and which relate to the development of their green skills. In addition, the course will be offered to students in the field of tourism in order to harmonize classical education with the future demands of the labour market through specific training that provide an innovative approach and attractive skills as an outcome. Finally, the developed training programme will involve Learning outcomes will be verified by certificates of completed courses, which should contribute to a better position of both work age employees and students in the labour market, i.e. to facilitate during the school-to-work or job-to-job transitions. Courses as such are not part of the compulsory curriculum of vocational studies, do not bring ECTS, but can be a supplement to diplomas and bring a certificate of acquired skills during the course, with a detailed course curriculum. In addition to the environmental aspect of business, which is reflected in the application of the principles of circular economy, waste separation and recycling, as well as the use of renewable energy sources in tourist facilities, a special segment of short-cycle courses will be the digital and paperless approach to teaching and training activities.
Objectives
An overall project goal is to enhance green skills, knowledge, values and attitudes of both work age adults and students in the field of tourism, to develop and support sustainable social, economic and environmental outcomes in the tourism industry and the local community. The ESSEFT project aims at overcoming the green skills mismatch of working-age adults employed in the tourism and hospitality industry, focusing on mitigating hotels workforce green skill mismatch as a specific skill competitive part of the tourism industry and facilitate job to job transition of this group. The secondary targeted group are students in the field of tourism and improvements of their green skills in order to enhance their opportunities in school-to-work transition.
Above mentioned problems and priority will be addressed by the following specific project objectives:
1) Research green skills mismatch in the field of tourism at the labour market;
2) Engage professionals from profit organizations in the teaching process in order to transfer their professional experience in the field of green skills to both for working-age adults to successfully manage labour market transitions as well to vocational students in order to mitigate problems of school to work transition;
3) Engage typically university teaching tools in acquiring green competencies to achieve innovation in vocational education and training (fostering intersectoral cooperation between HEI and VET; short cycle courses as a usual tool of HEIs implemented in VET), and the increasing attractiveness of VET;
4) Build digitally available new curriculums and learning platform focused on labour market needs in the field of green skills application in the tourism and hospitality industry;
5) Produce digitally available materials for educational courses (develop learning platform, textbooks, exercises and tasks) focused on zero paper usage;
6) Deliver short-cycle learning courses for students in the field of sustainable and eco-friendly tourism will be awarded a certificate;
7) Make recommendations for policymakers based on the project results.
Implementation
The stated objectives will be addressed by the following activities:
• defining the context and status of working-age adults and students in green skills mismatches at the national and international level;
• including long-term unemployed as the participants with fewer opportunities at the labour market;
• exploring the preferences of consumers targeting those who are inclined to choose for their vacation hotels that apply green practices;
• developing training activities for acquiring green competencies by professionals from profit organizations at the international level;
• developing learning curriculums based on identified labour market needs in green procedures in the hotel industry;
• developing online learning platform and delivering lectures through it with a few face-to-face learning activities for short-cycle learning courses;
• awarding developed skills with certificate and measure students’ satisfaction with this innovative learning methodology to act proactively in up-dating VET course’ curriculums;
• making policy recommendations related to the changes in VET learning programs addressing green skills and competencies for sustainable and eco-friendly tourism.
Results
The project will deliver four intellectual outputs as the results of the above activities:
1. Report on labour market green skills mismatch in tourism and hospitality industry;
2. Handbook Green skills and sustainable and eco-friendly tourism and customized ESSEFT short-cycle learning course curriculum
3. ESSEFT online learning platform;
4. Teaching materials for ESSEFT short-cycle course and policy recommendations.