The progress registered in the building of a new online skills database for the Hospitality Industry and securing its future where some of the main issues discussed in the steering committee meeting of the YES Employability Project which was held on the 27th and 28th June 2011 in Estoril, Lisbon, Portugal.
The eight partners of the YES Employability – Young Europeans, Skills for Employability in Tourism Project, have been working for months on a database of skills and competences in the Tourism Industry that will lead to the creation of a specific Europass CV that will facilitate the mobility of workers in Europe in this particular industry.
This database is called TEEMPASS and is expected to be officially launched towards the end of this year, just a few months before the end of the EU-funded project.
During the steering committee meeting the YES Project partners expressed their intention to explore ways the TEEMPASS online database thrives beyond the end of the project early next year, with the full participation and support of industry stakeholders.
Malta’s Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) is the leading partner and the other partners are the Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism (Italy), ARTES srl (a research firm from Italy), the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, the Portuguese Association of Hotel Directors, INESP (a research firm from Portugal), the Technical Institute of Larnaca and the Cyprus Chefs Association.
The project partners have approved a proposal by ITS to create an international network of TEEMPASS users and creation a think tank on the development of tourism education across different European countries. These two functions may be amalgamated together through the formation of an international organisation based on local chapters – Tourism Educator Alliance (TEA). This organisation would also assume the responsibility for the administration and further development of the TEEMPASS online skills database, in order to better secure and continue the work already carried out in the YES Project.
Mr Ray Vassallo, EU Project Co-ordinator at ITS, addressing the meeting
A book with the research analyses on the skills and competencies for employability in Tourism done by the project partners was published last December and a new publication is expected in the coming months.
The two-year project is financed by the European Union as part of the Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme. The project tackles the need of the Tourism Education and Vocational Training sector for a workable system of validation, transfer and recognition, of skills and competencies achieved during formal, informal and non-formal circumstances, expressed in transferrable units, and that can be linked to national and European frameworks presently in use.
The direct targets are operators (tutors, trainers, teachers, guidance counsellors) who supply training, guidance and placement services to subjects who are part of the educational and vocational training system and young people enrolled in such systems.
