RATIONALE

Tourism and Hospitality are important generators of economic growth, employment, and socioeconomic integration in Europe. In 2010, for example, more than nine million persons were employed in the tourism industry, which equals to over four percent of all persons employed. Through the growth of globalization, a wide variety of career opportunities have emerged in this sector, most notably for the socio-demographic group of persons who have completed lower secondary education. However, since European tourism is largely a small and medium-sized tourism industry, often employers lack proper training programs necessary for the advancement of the skills and competences of their employees. What is more, pedagogical materials that target the vocational needs of low skilled employees and under-educated workers very rarely do they take into consideration their specific needs. Subsequently, existing training courses do not enable this specific risk group to develop entry-level skills required for successful labor market integration and development.

WHAT IS CORE-VET?

The EU co-funded project with the acronym 'CORE-VET' tackles the need to develop skilled labor in the tourism sector and strives to provide vocational education and training possibilities - and better employment opportunities - for unskilled and/or semi-skilled people who are either unemployed, but wish to enter the tourism industry, or they are already working in the tourism industry, but lack the necessary skills and competences in order to advance in their job.

In particular, CORE-VET targets three occupational fields that are represented widely in the tourism sector:

  • Reception and Front office services
  • House Keeping Services
  • Restaurant and Bar Services.

CORE-VET builds upon the highly successful, former LdV project "Basic skills for Work" and aspires to adapt, localize, transfer and valorize the guidelines and training materials for the tourism and leisure sector to the specific needs of the targeted occupations and of unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the region of South East Europe, focusing especially in Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Austria and Greece.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES

CORE-VET aims to facilitate the process of adapting a training module to the necessary basic skills in the tourism and hospitality sector which is targeted directly at the risk-group of low-skilled employees and workers. The project promotes the recognition of smaller segments of learning and can be a powerful motivator for underemployed who are oftentimes neglected in the VET systems.

Its specific, interlinked objectives are to:

  • Enhance the work performance of low skilled workers and improve their employability.
  • Offer a flexible, interactive and user friendly e-learning platform to unskilled workers; thus, enabling them to improve their skills and take advantage of opportunities to improve their position in the labor market.
  • Provide SMES employers in the tourism sector, which may lack the proper training schemes, with a flexible and easy to use training tool in order to enhance the skills and competences and potentially the productivity and performance of their staff.
  • Provide VET trainers with adequate innovative tools and resources – in terms of methodology – to address the needs of semiskilled and low-skilled workers and employees.

WHO WE ARE

The CORE-VET consortium builds a bridge between the Education, Training and Consulting sectors in five European countries, namely Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, and Austria. It consists of eight partners that offer their expertise after having been carefully selected according to the complementary profiles necessary to implement this challenging initiative.

Trends in VET policy in Europe 2010-12

Progress towards the Bruges communiqué

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Curriculum reform in Europe

The impact of learning outcomes

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Developments and challenges in the hospitality and tourism sector

Issues paper for discussion at the Global Dialogue Forum for the Hotels, Catering, Tourism Sector
(23–24 November 2010, Geneva)

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