With a focus on tourism education and training, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly looked to the future at the global education forum which brought together Ministers, employers, educators and learners to address the biggest challenges and opportunities for advancing training across every part of the sector.
According to the data analysed by UNWTO, the majority of the global tourism workforce are young people, many of them without further training or qualifications. At the same time, existing tourism education centres and programmes prioritise hospitality, with UNWTO aiming to fill the gaps and deliver courses and other training to allow students to gain knowledge of every part of the diverse sector.
In her keynote speech, UNWTO Executive Director Natalia Bayona said Tourism is the top employer of youth as about 882,000 tourism jobs per year will require vocational training by 2030.
Bayona presented the flexible three-year BSc in International Sustainable Tourism that UNWTO and the Swiss public university of Lucerne for Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) have developed to empower the future-oriented transformation of the entire tourism sector. This unique initiative will be the first time that UNWTO has been actively involved in an undergraduate programme, with modules that include a variety of UN-related topics, such as UN Diplomacy & Tourism and Global UNWTO Missions & Initiatives, and deliberately embeds the UN’s values and global goals throughout the courses. The first cohort of the programme will commence in fall 2024 with a first year in Madrid, followed by a remote year and a third last year in Switzerland.
Also, at the forum Ministers of Tourism from Andorra, Bahrain, Guatemala, the Philippines and Zambia brought their expert insights to a high-level Debate on Policies to Foster Innovation & Education for Current and Future Generations. The Challenges highlighted included the high turnover of tourism staff in comparison to other economic sectors and the lack of tourism as a subject in schools in most education systems. The discussion explored opportunities for shaping new policies, effective instruments, and global partnerships to support inclusive and sustainable tourism development while addressing the skill gap and creating value-added jobs.
Within the Education Forum, UNWTO presented the Education Toolkit, a guide of recommendations for helping all actors involved in education in the introduction of tourism as a subject of the secondary school curricula with the ultimate goal of attracting and cultivating the right talent for the tourism sector.
The UNWTO Education Toolkit offers an overview of the current status of high schools and vocational education training worldwide, it also gives recommendations derived from the contributions of UNWTO member states, non-member states and academic partners and it also presents successful case studies of integrating tourism education and training in public and private schools. In addition, it includes a comprehensive overview of the benefits, with specialised curricula provided by UNWTO’s academic partners: the Cambridge Assessment International Education, American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AHLEI), and the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO).
Participants were given an overview of the recently inaugurated Tourism Academy in Samarkand in collaboration with UNWTO, a key outcome of the country’s strong partnership with UNWTO.
In a fitting culmination to the Global Education Forum, Dr. Bao Jigang was honoured with the prestigious Ulysses Prize, a testament to his remarkable contributions to the field of tourism. Awarded as the 16th laureate of this esteemed accolade bestowed by UNWTO for outstanding achievements in the creation and dissemination of knowledge within the realm of tourism, Dr. Bao’s illustrious career stands as a shining example of his invaluable impact. Throughout his distinguished academic journey, he has played a pivotal role in catalysing the growth of domestic tourism, in his homely of the People’s Republic of China, elevating its scale and significance as a premier global tourism destination.
