study for the methodological framework

STUDY FOR THE METHODOLOGICAL

FRAMEWORK

June 2021

Skills Swap IO1: The Methodological Framework

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The following study is a combined study from national reports conducted by the partnership, which is involved in the Erasmus+ project ‘Skills Swap: Sharing Skills for WBL in VET for Europe’s Hospitality Sector’, Project Agreement 2020-1-UK01-KA202-079019.

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.


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Table of Contents Abbreviation Table .................................................................................................................................. 4

List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... 5

List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... 5

1. Skill Swap Context ........................................................................................................................... 6

1.1 Background, aims and objectives ........................................................................................... 6

1.2 The partnership ....................................................................................................................... 7

1.3 The purpose of IO1- Skills Swap: Methodological Framework ............................................... 9

2. National Studies ............................................................................................................................ 16

2.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 16

United Kingdom (RINOVA) ................................................................................................. 16

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) ................................................................................................. 18

Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 19

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) .................................................... 20

Cyprus (EDITC) .................................................................................................................... 23

2.2 Hospitality sector overview .................................................................................................. 26


Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) ................................................................................................ 30

Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 32


Cyprus (EDITC).................................................................................................................... 40

2.3 The view from the consultations ......................................................................................... 45



Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 55


Cyprus (EDITC) .................................................................................................................... 66

2.4 Current skills training ................................................................................................................. 73




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Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 77


Cyprus (EDITC) ................................................................................................................... 82

2.5 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 85



Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 87


Cyprus (EDITC) .................................................................................................................... 89

2.6 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... 92



Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 92


Cyprus (EDITC) .................................................................................................................... 94

2.7 References ............................................................................................................................ 95



Greece (DIMITRA) .............................................................................................................. 96


Cyprus (EDITC) .................................................................................................................... 98


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Abbreviation Table

Abbreviation Explanation

WBL Work-Based Learning

SMEs Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

CPD Continuing Professional Development

HR Human Resources

NVQ National Vocational Qualification

YP Young Professionals

SEND Special Educational Needs

LDD/SEN Learning Difficulties and Disabilities / Special Educational Needs


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List of Figures Figure 1. Tourism GDP inter-annual variation by month in 2020 in comparison to 2019 (in %), Spain .............................................................................................................................................................. 21 Figure 2. Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) results for year 2018. Division of the Hospitality sector .............................................................................................................................................................. 41 Figure 3. Tourists’ Opinions about Accommodation, Cyprus ............................................................... 43 Figure 4. Cyprus: tourists opinions about restaurants, food and beverage facilities ........................... 43 Figure 5. Skills gap in the sector- Results from the interviews, Cyprus ................................................ 67 Figure 6. Levels of training provided – Results from the interviews, Cyprus ....................................... 68 Figure 7. Difficulty in Offering Internal Trainings in Hotels – Results from the interviews, Cyprus ..... 69 Figure 8. Apprenticeships in hotels – Results from the interviews, Cyprus ......................................... 69 Figure 9. Barriers to organising Skills Swap – Results from the interviews, Cyprus ............................. 71 Figure 10. Helpfulness of the Memorandum of Understanding – Results from the Interviews, Cyprus .............................................................................................................................................................. 71

List of Tables Table 1. Total hospitality services (accommodation / catering) – 2020, Spain .................................... 35 Table 2. Total hospitality services (accommodation / catering) – 2019, Spain .................................... 36 Table 3. Number of employees according to their professional status – 2019, Spain ......................... 37 Table 4. Number of employees according to their professional status – 2020, Spain ......................... 37 Table 5. Number of employees according to the type of contract by activity – 2019, Spain ............... 38 Table 6. Number of employees according to the type of contract by activity – 2020, Spain ............... 38 Table 7. Number of employees by age and activity – 2019, Spain ....................................................... 38 Table 8. Number of employees by age and activity – 2020, Spain ....................................................... 39 Table 9. Number of employees by education level – 2019, Spain ........................................................ 39 Table 10. Number of employees by education level – 2020, Spain ...................................................... 40 Table 11. Labour force by gender. 4th quarter of 2019, Cyprus ............................................................ 42 Table 12. Labour force by gender and age. 4th quarter of 2019, Cyprus .............................................. 42


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1. Skill Swap Context

1.1 Background, aims and objectives

The Skills Swap project is aimed at upgrading the efficacy and relevance of contemporary VET in the hospitality sector by designing and integrating into sector-based VET provision an innovative 'skills swap' approach to employer-facilitated learning design in work-based learning (WBL) for employees and apprentices. ‘Skills Swap' initiatives focus on skills sharing within the sector for the mutual benefit of companies, VET participants and employees. By 'skills swap', we mean structured WBL opportunities where employees and apprentices are released from their roles with one employer for a fixed duration (typically half a day to 2 weeks) to learn skills provided by another employer. At the same time, employers benefit from the skills swap from the new skill(s) and/or fresh perspectives that their employees bring to their business as a result of the ‘swap’. The European hospitality sector is the largest part of Europe’s tourism industry. Europe is the number 1 tourist destination in the world - 713 million international arrivals (increasing from 670m in 2017; 620m in 2016) & tourism is the 3rd largest EU economic activity; it provides 25 million jobs, directly & indirectly & 5 million additional jobs expected in the next decade (Eurostat). The hospitality industry is a service sector that ‘straddles’ leisure & tourism & includes visitor accommodation, food & drink (cafes, bars, restaurants), event planning, attractions, cruises. However, it faces many challenges: there is a mismatch between the needs of industry & VET offers, including major skills gap - job-related, 'soft' competences -social, civic; digital literacy (Next Generation Tourism EACEA Sector Skills Alliance,2019). In some quarters there is a poor image of hospitality careers, with negative & often out of date perceptions of job quality -part-time, irregular hours, lower pay, fewer benefits, limited career prospects; yet both supply & demand-side pressures have raised standards, new occupations & better career pathways (EC DG for Internal Market, Industry & SMEs). Therefore, the overall AIM of Skills Swap is to contribute to upgrading the efficacy, transparency in skills validation & relevance of contemporary VET in the hospitality industry through a novel work-based learning Skills Swap approach. Its specific OBJECTIVES in terms of target groups are to:

- design, validate and integrate into hospitality C-VET provision an innovative, employer-facilitated 'skills swap' WBL strategy

- empower & upskill hospitality sector workers & apprentices with new, contemporary & relevant task-related C-VET support for job skills ('hard' and 'soft') through skills swapping

- equip Europe's educators working in sector VET on WBL actions (trainers, assessors, company HR personnel, staff with responsibilities for arranging work experience, job ‘tasters’, traineeships & apprenticeships) with new 'skill swap'-based resources & techniques


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- validate, through user testing, the approach with 140 work-based learners (employees and apprentices), 40 VET practitioners & 50 employer representatives.

Employer engagement has always been critical to effective VET. Employers are the ‘end-user’ destinations for VET learners & provide the on-the-job work experience that is required to make contemporary & relevant WBL a reality. Policy at the EU level is to encourage ever-greater involvement from employers in VET programme design & implementation (Bruges Communique, CEDEFOP) & for VET providers to demonstrate (e.g. New Skills Agenda for Europe; EQAVET evidence indicators) programmes that are relevant to current & anticipated needs of specific sectors. Hence, this Skills Swap proposal focuses on novel ways to set up and implement skills swapping & sharing within the sector for the mutual benefit of its target groups - hospitality sector companies (particularly SMEs), their employees & the VET practitioners that support them. In immediate view, hospitality is amongst the worst affected sectors suffer from the COVID-19 outbreak. In the UK, there are already endemic labour shortages, with 100,000 unfilled jobs in 2019 (UK Hospitality-Workforce Commission) with the sector reeling from Brexit with 32% of hospitality jobs in the capital being carried out by non-UK EU workers (Cambridge Econometrics for the GLA), whilst now it has to implement disaster preparedness plans (DCMS, Visit Britain, British Hospitality Association, 2020). Transnationally, the EC is working with key EU professional associations to coordinate tourism sector assistance measures (13 March 2020). Therefore, new approaches to support sector companies & their employees will be welcome, to help recover from loss then cope with demand upsurges anticipated from later 2020/through 2021 onwards (UNWTO). Transnationally, these challenges described here exist across Europe in the hospitality sector. The EC has recognised the importance of transnational solutions in hospitality, which is a highly mobile sector. For instance, EURES, the EU Job Mobility Portal has a dedicated hospitality section for generating skills passports, enabling jobseekers to present their skill profiles, document their formal and informal qualifications & have their experiences endorsed by previous employers. The project also aligns with the EU call to develop a 'common language' bridging education, training & the world of work–ESCO, which is developing classifications with the hospitality industry for the dedicated skills profiles needed in the sector. Therefore, inspired by the effectiveness of previous transnational actions in the sector (e.g. CS Tour to 2018, awarded Erasmus+ best practice involving partners Rinova, Folkuniversitetet & coordinated by Dimitra) the Skills Swap project has been designed to align to these transnational calls for action as a transnational Strategic Partnership project.

1.2 The partnership

The partnership comprises six partners from five countries, providing a wide geographical scope (UK, ES, SE, CY, EL). It has a strong balance between VET providers, employer/sectoral organisations, pedagogical design and know-how with digital learning resources in WBL at the EU level, including the professional development of practitioners, ‘in-work’ progression for apprentices and


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employees and immersion in the hospitality VET sector. In addition, it has a partner new to Erasmus+, Sextaplanta (ES) to enhance digital content capacity. The other partners have comprehensive transnational track records, meaning that its ‘introduction’ to Erasmus+ is supported in an experienced partnership environment. Whilst we have two Spanish partners, Spain is the 3rd most visited country in the work and its hospitality sector is branded as the 2nd, while their profile is highly complementary to the project objectives. Otherwise, the choice of partners was motivated shared gaps in current WBL provision and the need for new and common solutions for EU employers in hospitality who are facing unique challenges. Skills Swap is therefore deeply relevant to the situational context of each of the partners who each contribute high levels of added value, specifically: Rinova (UK) is an ESFA VET provider that has extensive experience in transnational cooperation. It operated Pan Out, a hospitality Careers Cluster now extended to 2023 through investment from the Greater London Authority. GLA, identified hospitality as ‘vulnerable’ to Brexit with 79,000 (32%) of jobs carried out by non-UK EU workers. Its skills swap academy and Hospitality Pathways programmes are operating in a context where UK hospitality employs 3.2 million, in which 2018 UK Hospitality survey revealed 11% of industry employees plan to leave the UK due to Brexit, resulting in a 60,000 shortfall; 75% of all unfilled vacancies are down to lack of generic transferable skills in applicants. Dimitra (EL): a national VET agency that operates an Academy providing training to hundreds of trainees across tourism and hospitality, cooperating with big hotel chains and cruise ship management companies in the selection, recruitment and training of their employees. Greece has the highest level of youth unemployment in Europe and the sector is a driver of the Greek economy, receiving 27.2 million tourists in 2017 accounting for 17% of all direct employment and up to 44.8 percent indirectly. Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce (CCIZ, ES) is a Public Law Corporation promoting public-private dialogue. It has a Commerce and Tourism Service and a Tourism Commission, chaired by one of the main hotel groups in Aragon. Tourism is one of the main sectors of the Spanish economy representing 11.2% of GDP, and 2.5 million employees (13.3% of all ES employment). As it is critical to the regional economy, CCIZ is also a partner in tourism work-based learning Erasmus+ KA2 and KA3 apprenticeships projects. Folkuniversitetet (SE) is the national open vocational technical college with over 30,000 learners annually. It has a strong focus on the hospitality sector, organising several VET programmes and multiple courses dedicated to Hotels and events management in Södertälje near Stockholm. It works with Scandic hotels, UHR (Hotel and Restaurant Training Council) and the sector Företagsekonomiska institutet and implemented multiple tourism and hospitality VET educations in Russia, funded by SIDA and Russian Ministry of Education, also promoting the Informal Adults’ Education for Cultural Tourism (Nordplus, 2017) EditC (CY) has extensive experience of e-learning and participated in ‘Health Points’ KA2 coordinated by Rinova, leading its successful ‘gamification’-based e-learning resource for tutors. It works in Nicosia operating VET school mentoring and work placements with the biggest hotel chain in Cyprus (Tsokkos Hotels), Cyprus Hotel Managers Association and Association of Cyprus Tourist Enterprises (ACTE) as well as Larnaka Tourism Authority. It has also placed more than 1,000 unemployed trainees in positions such as hotel receptionist, Food & Beverage, chef and Kitchen assistants and also trains for hotel manager and service quality in hotels.


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Sextaplanta (ES) is a social enterprise in the legal form of a cooperative that promotes the values of the social economy and those of responsible tourism across Andalusia. It operates digital strategy management services to help tourism companies, hotels or apartments achieve their marketing objectives in digital media. It offers digital capacity building to customers and associates, having a track record of with bespoke build of on-demand training and mentoring activities, both in-company, post graduate masters, lectures in several events and successful study cases to support their experience. It is new to European Union projects and has never before been involved in a Strategic Partnership. The Skills Swap project will produce five Intellectual Outputs (IOs):

IO1: Skills Swap: Methodological Framework– investigating the issues and designing the overall approach

IO2: VET practitioners' role specification and competency matrix:– what VET trainers need to know and be able to do to set up, coordinate, monitor and review effective skills swaps with and between companies

IO3: The Employer's Resource Pack: good practice in hospitality skills swapping– a guidance publication for hospitality companies (the proprietors and managers) who will be both the ‘host’ and the ‘sender’ of the skills swaps

IO4: The Skills Swap eTracker for hospitality employees and apprentices.– – a digital app for the employees and apprentices who are doing the skills swaps, to get the most from them

IO5: Skills swaps in hospitality; A Digital Toolkit for VET practitioners- an e-learning resource that will support Skills Swap Coordinators needs (in relation to IO2 above).

1.3 The purpose of IO1- Skills Swap: Methodological Framework

This technical Intellectual Output will set out the pedagogical vision for innovation in the Skill Swap concept in terms of the range of issues to be considered and the accompanying VET pedagogical methodology to be adopted. As a specification study, it will incorporate theoretical and practical domains that will provide the underlying foundations for designing, planning, implementing and reviewing skill swaps in WBL in the hospitality sector. As a stand-alone technical document, but also one against which the partners will develop subsequent IOs materials, it will be produced and published in English. This agenda is a shared one amongst the project partners, but there are differences in the approach to WBL as well as apprenticeships, C-VET and the sub-sectors within hospitality, which vary considerably by member state, and by organisational context. There is presently a great deal of 'ad hoc' arrangements that are identified as consistent with skills swapping, but they have not before been captured and structured in WBL in hospitality sector - related VET. The purpose will be to locate the innovation being proposed by the developing pedagogical concept, at the national level, in relation to the most critical issues in the hospitality sector in each country and then to draw together the most innovative and effective practice into a core European methodology. IO1 offers innovation through its approach to pedagogical design that is centred upon integrating skills swaps in WBL through the fusion of employers and VET practitioners’ needs The Bruges Communiqué on VET highlights how strong, attractive and inclusive VET systems tend to perform better and recommends labour market-led (needs of employers) VET and


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strategies that enhance high-level quality standards for VET. Therefore, the development of the Methodological Framework will incorporate guidelines and recommendations provided by CEDEFOP on employer engagement in VET and will consider how the methodology can facilitate the mutual recognition of the concept, competencies and learning generated by the project. In this way, the Methodological Framework will need to adopt an approach that can enhance the education and training paths for employees and apprentices to foster retention and progression through innovative methods, techniques and resources that link with the requirements of VET providers and employers. It will consider both practice aspects and, where they can be identified, digital aspects. After the presentation of the key strategic concepts by RINOVA, all partners provided a short presentation of the current situational analysis in their country and their hospitality sectoral contexts relating to the labour market trends, skills shortages and initial indications for the location of skills swapping. This was accomplished through a desk research focused on the hospitality sector and the concluding remarks from stakeholders’ interviews, each partner’s Advisory Group consultations and initial results from the employers’ interviews. These first outcomes were presented and discussed during an online meeting where all partners shared their conclusions and through a fruitful discussion the main issues and areas to be covered were documented. In continuance, a range of areas to be considered in developing the pedagogical concept and a detailed workplan for the employer, VET practitioner and stakeholder consultation was produced by DIMITRA. This specification set out how partners were to engage with these stakeholders in identifying the implications for developing the approach of the occupational role and the skill swap methodology. The specification set out a common format for the range and scope of work to be undertaken and a template format for capturing the data in order to ensure that there is a consistent approach to the consultation and engagement and the way in which the results are collated for findings. The topics to be considered while developing the pedagogical concept involved:

- the current skills training by the employers, - the way in which Skills Swap could address the needs of the employer, - the identifying barriers and potential issues that could come up, and - the potential approaches on how the Skills Swap could work

After the specification, the partners undertook a programme of qualitative research, case study investigation and stakeholder consultation in order to inform the development of the pedagogical concept. Consultations with the Skills Swap advisory groups were considered to have a great impact on how each partner area could work within the Skills Swap context. This programme of research included the following activities:

- Qualitative research with sector companies, practitioners and stakeholders providers to deepen understanding of issues and solutions

- Case study identification, interviews and write-ups - Review of relevant studies, methodologies and pedagogies

All of the above were collected, analysed and documented by each partner country in a national report, based on the template provided by the IO1 lead partner DIMITRA. The report included comprehensive information regarding:

- an overview of the hospitality sector in each country,


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- the view from the consultations/interviews – the perspective of the employers and the main barriers and solutions suggested

- the current skills training provided by each country From the above stakeholder consultations, five national reports were composed. The interviews were conducted mainly by accommodation managers as well as by the catering subsector. Based on the above data, the methodological framework is produced and concluded through the existing combined study. The data that were well defined and concluded from the national studies are summarised in the following six topics: 1. Main skills gap in the industry The main skills gap that are identified in the industry by the partners are mostly soft skills. This was considered as a surprise as technical skills were expected to be mostly included in the research findings. So, as concluded the most important skills gap are considered to be the following:

communication skills

skills in following procedures

skills in paying attention to details

professionalism

social skills

flexibility and adaptation to job roles

knowledge in marketing and sales

digital skills / ICT skills

quality customer service

customer experience In terms of priorities, the partnership agrees that soft skills are in general a priority, but also communication and ICT skills. It is generally admitted that soft skills concern mostly young professionals, while technical/practical skills may concern more people who work in the industry for a long time. The remarks from the partners assume that according to the interviews, there is not a balance between functional/job skills and ‘work culture’ skills but it is suggested that a balance between them should be finally kept. Furthermore, it is noted that some specific skills gap change constantly and this may happen due to unpredictable conditions, such as the COVID situation. Since soft skills was an answer mostly met in the interviews and not anticipated much, this is something we need to explore further in the methodology development - as to how we would, in practical terms, develop soft skills through skills swaps in the project, and whilst employers would like this aspect to be developed, they were less specific about how it could be done.

2. Skills Swap Timings There is a general view among partners in the Mediterranean area (Greece, Cyprus, Spain) that Skills Swap should take place during off seasons (October-November & February-March) since there is more availability in terms of time for a ‘training’ period. Although, it is suggested by several partners, that timing for swapping should be flexible and that it could be left as a


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choice for the employer. This is due to the different high-season periods between North and Southern Europe but also due to different perceptions, for example there were interviewees that agreed that even though during low season there is more time for training, during high season it is more possible to acquire and learn more skills. The duration of the Skills Swap should last from one to two weeks, even though some reports refer to even a longer period time. 3. Preparation of the employers organising the Skills Swap The overall suggestion is that the employers should have a clear idea of what they want to get out of the skills swap, i.e. they should be as precise as possible in terms of the desired outcome. This could be achieved through a thorough induction meeting, a detailed skills swap request form along with group employer meetings, where common concerns, solutions and good practices can be discussed. It is clearly suggested that employers should be precise, patient, detailed and giving clear directions to the swappers. In addition, communication skills, teamwork, empathy, leadership, crisis management should be among the required main soft skills they should have. Finally, the pre-agreement but also a pre-questionnaire will help in the organisation of the Skills Swap, giving information on the matching but also on the whole Skills Swap procedure. 4. Matching of the Skills Swap Partners Matching in Skills Swap is a challenge, a task that requires a lot of prior attention and preparation. Although, the partnership managed to acquire some suggestions or conditions and preconditions for a successful matching to be prepared. The involved groups should be matched according to the following remarks, as suggested and derived by the partnership’s research:

some employers feel that matching should be made with common stars-system ratings

some employers feel that the matching should be with similar types of employers whereas others can see the benefits of swapping with different types and sizes of employer

some employers suggest that the companies should share similar/shared values/ethos but different specialities. This way they can learn from one another but with common understanding of core values

one way to carry out the matching between companies could be to match businesses with opposite cycles as many businesses are clearly affected by seasonal trends with large differences between the peaking period and off-season

the proximity of the businesses is a positive characteristic for the swapping. Businesses is advised to be located in the same geographical area

it is suggested that a relationship should be created between the companies that are to engage and cooperate with each other to conduct skills swap, but also most certainly between the Skills Swap co-ordinator on the one hand and the companies and employers on the other hand

From the overall discussion with the partnership, it is concluded that it is essential that we have a needs analysis from the involved SMEs in the project, as to what the desired outcome they want to have. In this way, possibly distributing a questionnaire before the swapping, we could get the best idea on how to match businesses. Therefore, there is not one solution (stars-rating or opposite cycles, for example) in order to match the businesses.


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5. Skills Swap Barriers The main barriers that the Skills Swap research has identified are the following:

Poaching (actual and the fear of it)

Health and Safety issues/ Insurance

Economic barriers such as: who would pay the salary of the employee participating in the programme? would there be any type of subsidy to equalise salaries according to the city of destination? who would cover food, travel, expenses of the participating employee?

Legal issues that are addressed in the legislative status of each country

Willingness of staff to attend swaps to enhance their skills – buy in from the participants will be essential as they will be out of their comfort zone and maybe challenged by new tasks. They may also have to travel further or work different hours for a short time

Post pandemic, will employers have the time and inclination to take part in this when they are trying to re-build their business? Timing will be crucial to the success of the skill swap model

Time taken to organise the skills swap in an industry that is usually working at 100% capacity and at full speed

Agreements that are too rigid could turn employers off of this idea – need to be flexible to allow for different types/size of employers

Another main problem is that defined directions should apply into who will decide which employees are exchanged among the businesses and to which businesses (size, services)

Competitive barriers. This is the case of SMEs in settlements that are competitive and secrecy could create problems for the implementation of the project

It is clearly suggested by the partnership that the above barriers can be overcome through communication, clear explanation of the project and the written agreement between the involved stakeholders.

6. Memorandum of Understanding & Code of Conduct Almost all partners showed a clear preference and suggestion that a Memorandum of Understanding should be foreseen mostly as a means of preventing the probability of poaching as well as to issue the procedure as a formal process. From the partnership, the following characteristics should be included in the Memorandum:

What is a skills swap?

How does it work?

What are the aims and objectives of the swap? What are the benefits?

A clause about poaching /recruiting staff during the swap

Who is involved in the skills swap? Matching and control over the appropriate professional profile of the employees that are exchanged

How long will the Skills Swap be? Start-End date and time

Health & safety issues / insurance issues

How to resolve conflicts? What is the procedure when things go wrong?

Named points of contact for reporting and questions/problem-solving


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Feedback and follow-up process Based on the above and the analysis of the wider findings that arose from the consultation and research, there is a number of areas that suggest themselves for the development of knowledge, skills and competences for VET coordinators who are to be involved in the planning, organisation and implementation of skills swaps between hospitality sector employers and employees or apprentices - or VET planners and organisers who see the potential of integrating the concept of skills swaps into their work-based learning programmes in hospitality. In summary, these are:

Acquiring familiarity with financial/practical and legislative implications of the skill swap activity. The involved co-ordinators should be familiarised with all the implications in the context of their skills swap activities.

Methodology of identifying main skills gap and the need for swapping. This would incorporate the design and application of an Organisational Needs Analysis that helps the employer identify skills gaps in their team that might be a good opportunity for the delivery of a skill swap activity.

Training and preparation of the employers concerning skills swapping. In the UK, there is currently a welcome meeting with employers, which is followed up with a one to one meeting to go over the points in 1 and discuss practicalities. Employers could also be referred to Mentor training if that is available and would be of assistance.

Methodology of matching enterprises and selecting Skills Swap time period. For example, in the current model in the UK, the request /offer goes out to the employers and this will certainly be down to the skill swap organiser knowing their employers, their needs, the skill set of their staff, their values and working styles etc. In Greece, while swapping is implemented privately among hotels from the same club, the matching is very specific among same-star hotels and conducted by the employers/managers.

Drafting the CoC/Memorandum of Understanding setting out all of the relevant arrangements and provisions. Again in the UK, there is an existing Skill Swap Agreement, the core of which can be used as a basis or template, but on which partners may want to devise something that is suitable for their own needs and model (for instance, where legislative requirements differ). In other countries, there is not a relevant document supporting a skills swap practice.

Engagement with companies to promote hospitality skills swaps as WBL concept. It is considered to be of high importance as the engagement of suitable employers and their familiarisation with the WBL concept will be a key component in making sure the initial Swaps have every chance of success. This could be achieved through dissemination procedures concerning the skills swap methodology and process.

Monitoring and reviewing skills swap progress with the involved parties. It is suggested that there should be some form of feedback process after the swaps have taken place so that the effectiveness and the results of the progress could be documented and reviewed. In this way, the Skills Swap methodology could be easily assessed and modified for the best results.


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From the reports and the findings, besides the identified areas to be defined for IO2, it is also important to note that the Skills Swap methodology should be as non-bureaucratic as possible, as bureaucracy is a major inhibited factor stated in the involved interviewees. Furthermore, starting from the nature of the hospitality sector, the Skills Swap coordinators working with the companies in a VET/WBL context must be communicative, supportive, welcoming, professional but informal, in order to be more effective in the communication and the organization of Skills Swap. The coordinators should have an expertise in emphasising interpersonal communications and in supporting as well as the ability to turn to 'tools' and written guidance. It is important for the above to contribute to structuring the procedure and further clarifications and not putting off or burdening or over complicating. Therefore, the partnership considers that interpersonal contact is important, there should be often but practical meanings leading to solutions and overcoming all barriers, based on networking, exchanging ideas and investigating possibilities.


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2. National Studies

2.1. Introduction

At this introductory part of the research, the partners focused on the geographical targeting in the consultations and their own work with hospitality sector training as well as the overall characteristics in terms of the overall approach to the consultation.

United Kingdom (RINOVA)

All companies contacted for the purposes of the study are London based, but some may have sister companies or sites in other areas of the country. They are all very different types of hospitality providers, some quite unique in their services and others more traditional. All were direct providers of hospitality services with one being sub-sector in hair and beauty services, but who have operated their business from a major hospitality site. Rinova have a history of involvement in sector specific hospitality projects both nationally and internationally and is recognised in the capital for its extensive work within the sector. Rinova is currently delivering a cluster of large scale – partnership programmes, funded provision under both European Social Funds and European Structural Funds. Rinova is currently leading on a series of Pan-London programmes aimed at:

Increasing the visibility and attractiveness of the sector as a career pathway – PanOut. Through this project Rinova have worked directly with schools and in collaboration with employers to enhance the knowledge of teachers/pupils and careers guidance advisors, in relation to the opportunities which exist within the sector. Now in its 6th year of delivery, PanOut has supported over 3500 pupils and delivered 20 Employer Led Pilots to date.

Training and preparing young people and adults for careers in the industry across the capital – Head2Work and Progress into Hospitality. Between 2019-2023 these projects will see a total of 700 young people receive specialist training to enable them to take up opportunities in the hospitality industry and will move into positive work progressions via our networks of sector employers.

Up-skilling existing sector employees – Hospitality Pathways for Employees. Working in partnership with a number of colleges and local authority Lifelong Learning departments, this project will support 3,587 existing sector employees to improve their skills and gain more rewarding, better paid work within the industry. Aimed at those with basic skills and in lower paid jobs, the project aims to create new opportunities at entry level, whilst also encouraging and enabling those from BAME groups to progress within their chosen career paths.

Working with Hospitality Employers to devise new models of training and professional development and support to better meet the needs of the industry – Hospitality Pathways for Employers. This project involves Rinova working collaboratively with 200 Sector SMEs to support a minimum of 240 employees, designing innovative models and sharing best practise to enable Sector SME businesses to compete and thrive.


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Rinova have also previously led and participated in a number of Hospitality focused Erasmus + projects, including EUEMNET ( which focused on predicting the future skill requirements of the sector), Inmatour and CS Tour – both of which were innovation, international co-operation programmes. In order to consolidate our presence in the Sector and as an umbrella for all our publicly funded provision, Rinova have just launched The Hospitality Academy – the hospitality academy website hosts details of all the current hospitality projects: https://hospitalityacademy.rinova.co.uk/ working with different target groups and stakeholders. As a result of our extensive work in the sector we have developed a varied network of sector employers who are keen to engage with us on these projects and bring to the table different areas of expertise. Because of the nature of our work in the sector, many of our employers are SMEs and small independent businesses, although we do also have links to larger companies and chains. As we have a history of working collaboratively with our employers in the development of new programmes and models, they are open to discussing matters of training and development with us. We worked with some of our close and reliable contacts on the following consultations. During the consultations with the Hospitality employers, we focused on their current training and how this was provided for new and current staff, whether this was provided by external providers or via in-house training. We also looked at how they addressed skills gap with their staff and offered ongoing continual professional development. We also asked them about any involvement with apprenticeships. The response to the question on Apprenticeships was very mixed with some being very eager to have apprentices and offer young people the chance to ‘learn and earn’ and whilst others had significant reservations. For those with reservations, the concerns included; not getting the right person, where or how to recruit or the time commitment required and not being able to convince an existing manager that it was a good idea. What was interesting is that those who were not educated in the UK, but had risen to managerial positions, were almost always in favor of and supportive to the idea of apprenticeships because that is often how they got into the sector and worked their way up. There seems to be a very different attitude to Apprenticeships in different countries, with the way they are still viewed in the UK being very different to how they are viewed in the rest of Europe. There is still some stigma around apprenticeships in some sectors, with many UK audiences viewing them as being more appropriate for those who did not do well in exams. For many they are viewed as a second-best option and not as highly regarded as a degree or A levels. This is changing, but slowly and these beliefs do impact on an employer’s perception of candidates who came via an apprenticeship route rather than University or any other academic route. During the consultations, employers were also asked what they felt the barriers might be to instigating skills swaps and what protocols would need to be put in place to ensure that these were effective and productive for both parties. Answers were very mixed and there were also concerns about time and timing. Obviously, our consultations have taken place with the backdrop of the COVID lockdown in the UK and the immense impact this has had on a sector that has been closed almost entirely for the best part of a year with only a few short months of opening in the summer of 2020. This did of course impact on the answers from employers and had to be taken into account when considering their concerns about time, costs and

https://hospitalityacademy.rinova.co.uk/


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priorities. Employers coming out of the lockdown and furlough with their staff and businesses, which essentially have been mothballed for several months, will face many challenges before being fully operational. There was certainly agreement that there should be a formal written document when organizing the skills swaps but also a sense that there should be some flexibility in this for employers, as anything too rigid could put employers off from engaging with the idea. Some employers did highlight that they have explored this idea in some form in the past, some of these have been informally and in a small way internally, while others may have been part of an inter-company model across branches or with other employers. This does mean that there was a good mix of experience and genuine interest in the skills swap idea and this was fed back via the consultation process and interviews.

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) Many of Folkuniversitetet’s activities are focused on hospitality and tourism. Listed below are some examples of Folkuniversitetet’s engagement and work with regards to the hospitality and tourism sector. Folkuniversitetet:

Have run and are continuously organizing multiple courses and study circles, related to tourism and hospitality (e.g. “Sustainable Travel”)

Have organised hundreds of study circles, public lectures and events, related to tourism and hospitality (e.g. “Uppsala och Turism”, lecture by Destination Uppsala)

Have cooperated and are currently cooperating with a number of organisations, running cultural programs, international exchanges, tourist exhibitions, study circles with study trips.

Coordinated or participated in several EU-funded projects regarding tourism and hospitality (Erasmus+, Nordplus).

The geographical targeting of the consultations made in Sweden has been on a regional level.1 The consultations have been carried out with employers of different businesses within the hospitality industry, representatives of companies, employees with managerial positions, but also with a business developer, destination developer and recruitment specialist in the industry in order to get a width in the perspectives of the questions we aim to get answers to through these consultations. The main focus during the consultations has been to present the main concept of the Skills Swap project, the idea and the objectives of the project and the method of skills exchanges that we want to develop, realise and implement through the life span of this project. One of the aims with having these interviews has been to further examine how the project idea and the work-based learning method the Skills Swap project is developing are received and viewed among those working in the sector in our national context. The main focus has been to investigate potential obstacles and barriers to the realisation of the skills swap concept between organisations from an employer’s perspective, as well as what the possible solutions could be to those same aspects.

1 Specifically, Gävle, Söderhamn, Sundsvall and Stockholm.


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Greece (DIMITRA) According to the OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2020 report, tourism is one of the most important sectors of the Greek economy and a key pillar of economic growth. Tourism GDP accounted for 6.8% of total GVA in 2017. The sector directly employed 381.800 people in 2018, accounting for 10.0% of total employment in the country. Tourism is an export champion in the Greek economy. Travel exports accounted for 43.3% of total service exports in 2018. However, tourism development across regions is highly unbalanced. This is attributed particularly to the highly insular and mountainous geomorphology of the country, the uneven distribution of natural, socio-cultural and environmental resources, and the lack of appropriate regional and tourism development policies. In order to have a clear understanding on the existing digitization status-quo, we will focus mainly on the Region of Thessaly, and the SMEs in the Tourism and Hospitality sector based in it. The revenues of the Region of Thessaly from tourism in 2019, represented 2% (€ 471 million) of the total revenues of the country while the direct contribution of tourism to the GDP of the Region was 5% (Annual report on competitiveness and structural adjustment in the tourism sector for the year 2019 - Region of Thessaly, INSETE) Regarding the employment statistics, according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority the tourism and hospitality sector has more than twenty thousand employees (2019) that correspond to the 8,1% of the total employment in the region. Regarding the structure of the accommodation sector, in 2019 the Region of Thessaly represents:

In the Hotel sector: the 6% of the total companies of the country, the 3% of the total rooms in the country and the 3% of the total beds in the country. The total number of the companies are 555.

In the Accommodation sector: the 6% of the total companies of the country, the 6% of the total rooms in the country and the 6% of the total beds in the country. The total number of the companies are 1693.

In the tourist houses and villas sector: the 4% of the total companies of the country, the 4% of the total rooms in the country and the 4% of the total beds in the country. The total number of the companies are 502.

The total number of the companies in the accommodation sector in 2019 was 2.750 companies. The General Satisfaction Index (GRI) of hotel customers in the Region of Thessaly improved in the period 2018-2019 (from 86.2% in 2018 to 87.0% in 2019). In addition, we should mention that the Region of Thessaly recorded in 2019 the 5th highest percentage of hotel customer satisfaction in the total of 13 regions. ‘DIMITRA Education and Consulting’ has been active in the development and implementation of programs of education and training, skills enhancement, and employability in the tourism industry for two decades. Moreover, DIMITRA undertakes research and studies in the framework of projects or assisting companies and organizations on the development of their human resources. As far as the European projects DIMITRA was involved in relation to tourism, the below are the most relevant: DIMITRA was the coordinating partner of the ‘CSTour’ project, during which the partnership developed a curriculum, training tools, and an online assessment in order to help the


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potential trainees assess their current state, a book and a certification skill for the development of Social and cultural awareness skills in the tourism sector. CSTour project was selected as a best practice for the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform. Furthermore, along with the coordination of the current Skills Swap project, DIMITRA is partner to several projects concerning Tourism & Hospitality, such as the “dTour-Introducing digitalisation for boosting SMEs in Tourism and Hospitality” that aims to train and certify agents that will promote digitalisation to boost SMEs’ performance, in Tourism and Hospitality, and the “WeSkill – Wellness and Spa Tourism Sectoral Skills’ Development” with the objectives to design transnational curricula and respective training content in wellness and spa tourism sector, making wellness and spa tourism sector more appealing, sustainable, advanced and competitive in the EU area. Finally, a significant contribution of the Organisation to the Tourism sector is that DIMITRA has founded the Tourism Academy to provide educational services with the objective to meet the new trends of tourism, addressing the global tourism and hospitality industry market. Tourism Academy integrates training programs in Tourism (management, marketing, gastronomy, bar services, beauty services, security). The programs are addressed to companies that believe the training of their employees can help upgrade their services, to unemployed who are interested in the tourism industry and to Tourism Management students. The Tourism Academy training courses are structured and organized to suit the need of foreign students.

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) The concept of ‘hospitality’ in Spain: Before the pandemic, the touristic sector was in Spain the sector that contributed the most wealth to the Spanish economy, with almost 3 million jobs and a total of 176 billion euros annually, representing more than 12% of GDP and around 13.6% of employment. In 2019, Spain was the second most visited country in the world, only behind France and followed by the USA. The COVID-19 pandemic, according to official figures, has meant that the contribution of tourism to national GDP has fallen to 4.3%, with an economic loss quantified at 106 billion euros. The graphic below shows how touristic activities were practically inexistent in the second and fourth quarters of 2020. Only the easing of restrictive and confining measures, not only by Spain but also by most European countries, allowed a light reactivation of tourism activity in the third quarter.


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Figure 1. Tourism GDP inter-annual variation by month in 2020 in comparison to 2019 (in %), Spain

Source: Spanish Secretary of State for Tourism

This slump in tourism activity affected, in December 2020, around 728,000 jobs in Spain, of which 435,000 were in Temporary Employment Regulation Record (ERTE, in its Spanish acronym), while 293,000 people lost their jobs permanently. The tourism sector comprises hotel and catering, transport and other tourism-related businesses, as trips and stays made by people in places other than their usual environment for leisure, business or other reasons. Nevertheless, this project is not about the tourism sector, but about the hospitality sector. In Spanish hospitality is a broad concept. According to the Real Academia de la Lengua, hospitality is a "virtue that is exercised with pilgrims, the needy and destitute, taking them in and giving them due assistance in their needs". It also means "a good reception and welcome given to strangers or visitors". Taking this definition as a point of departure we can understood ‘Hospitality’ as a concept assimilated to the hospitality sector in general, which is a part of the tourism sector. And, at the same time, the hospitality sector includes the provision of short-stay accommodation to tourists and travellers (accommodation services), and of food and beverages for immediate consumption, either on the premises or elsewhere (restaurant services). In turn, each of these subsectors is divided into branches of activity. Thus, accommodation services include hotels and similar accommodation businesses, tourist accommodation and other short-stay accommodation (flats and rural houses), campsites and caravan parks, and other accommodation (residences, hostels, etc.). Restaurant services comprise restaurants and food stalls, drinking establishments and catering establishments. The methodology followed in Spain: The Spanish national report has been carried out jointly by the two Spanish partners of the project: Sextaplanta, based in Málaga (Andalucía); and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services of Zaragoza, based in Zaragoza (Aragón). This joint work has required the holding of several regular online meetings in order to coordinate their actions and provide the report with the necessary coherence, cohesion and consistency. In conducting the first part of the report, the desk research, the Spanish partners have identified and presented data on the sector structure, production and employment at national level for both 2019 and 2020, with the intention of showing the relentless impact that COVID-19 disease has had on hospitality sector in our country.

-1

1,8

-62,2

-99,2 -97,6-90

-63,3-53,5

-69,3-82,2 -84,2 -84,2

-120

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20


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The main sources we have used for this purpose are: Hostelería de España, the business organisation representing restaurants, bars, cafés and pubs in our country; the Spanish Ministries of Industry, Trade and Tourism; Education and Vocational Training; Labour and Social Economy; Turespaña, the public body, attached to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism through the Secretariat of State for Tourism, responsible for marketing Spain as a travel destination in the world, and which has quarterly and annual statistics compiled from data from the National Statistics Institute's Labour Force Survey; Dataestur, a new data platform that presents sector indicators from public and private sources presented by the Spanish Government in December 2020; and Exceltur, a non-profit association made up of 33 of the most relevant companies from the entire tourism value chain and from the sub-sectors of air, rail, maritime and land transport, accommodation, travel agencies and tour operators, means of payment, car hire, tourist hospitals and reservation centres/GDS. Regarding the second part of this report, that is the interviews and consultations to professionals, with the aiming of getting a complete picture of the sector, Sextaplanta addressed the accommodation sub-sector, while the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce focused on the catering sub-sector. Sextaplanta interviews, accommodation sub-sector Sextaplanta conducted the interviews during February 2021, when there were restrictions on mobility due to the third wave of COVID-19 infections in Spain, so the interviews were carried out individually and online, using a video conferencing platform. In total, nine interviews were conducted with company owners and managers, seven of which were recorded for future reference, the participants signed a consent form. In order to reach a great variety of business profiles and realities, Sextaplanta selected a range of establishments of different types, sizes and locations was made. Thus, among the companies interviewed there are urban or city hotels, 3 and 4-star hotels, boutique hotels in rural areas, city tourist flats, companies managing holiday homes, and a guesthouse in a holiday destination. As far as the number of employees is concerned, among the accommodation establishments interviewed, there are establishments with stable workforces of around 50 employees and very familiar establishments and/or with few employees. In terms of location, all the interviewees are located in the region of Andalucía, one of the most touristic regions in Spain, except for one, which was located in the region of Murcia. Although most of the accommodations are located in this region, the tourist destinations are varied, there are accommodations in major tourist hotspots such as Málaga, Benalmádena, Córdoba or Ronda. However, some of the interviewees are in inland destinations such as Pizarra (inland in the province of Malaga), Gerena (inland in the province of Seville) and finally, outside the region of Andalusia, Puerto Lumbreras (Murcia). Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza interviews, catering sub-sector The Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza carried out eight interviews with restaurant owners and managers and three interviews with workers in the subsector during the month of February and the first week of March. All of them were carried out individually, but different means and platforms were used: video conference platforms, telephone, WhatsApp, and even some of them, once the main objectives of both the project and the study had been explained, expressed their preference


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to answer the questions directly in writing form in order to be able to think about the answers outside the working environment and working hours. Thanks to the collaboration of Horeca Zaragoza, the Federation of Hotel and Catering Businesses of Zaragoza, which includes the Zaragoza Restaurant Association and the Zaragoza Hotel Association, and which brings together more than 350 associates, among the companies interviewed we found representatives of the different groups that make up the catering subsector, such as: food and beverage establishments (3), bars (1) and collectivities and catering (4). The three employee interviews represent the group of bars (2) and restaurants (1). As far as the number of employees is concerned, most of the enterprises interviewed could be classified as small enterprises (less than 50 employees) and three of them could even be classified as micro-enterprises as they have less than 10 employees. As for the geographical scope, all the companies to which the interviewees belong (employees and employers) are located in the province of Zaragoza, except for one, which is located in Ariño, a village in the province of Teruel.

Cyprus (EDITC) EDITC was established in 1996, aiming to provide quality-learning solutions to professionals and adults. It is comprised by 3 departments: 1. Education & Information Technology Center: Delivers ICT training (for adults & professionals) and vocational training. 2. KEM (Center for Professional & Vocational Training for Engineers) 3. Research and Development Department EDITC has been involved in numerous ESF programs that included classroom let training & on the job training (of 8-12 weeks). EDITC signed more than 30 contracts with the Human Resource Development Authority for the training & placement of unemployed on various professions such as Receptionists, Sales, Baristas, Waiters, Chef Assistants, Kitchen Assistants, Food & Beverage Managers etc. During these programmes the unemployed people were trained and placed in different workplaces. During the placements, EdITC counsellors visited the persons in order to see if the placement was running smoothly to watch them during work and to talk to them. During the visits EDITC Counsellors had the chance to speak to their supervisors and learn about the person’s progress. EDITC is now working closely with a Polish Organization on 2 Polish National projects. The aim is the placement of VET students from 3 big VET schools in Poland with more than 400 students to the Hotel industry. We are collaborating with the biggest hotel chain in Cyprus (Tsokkos Hotels) with more than 30 hotels in Cyprus. The placements include mentoring in the workplace, which is done in cooperation with the sending VET schools. EdITC also has strong relations with the Larnaka Tourist Authority, Cyprus Hotel Association and the Association of Cyprus Tourist Enterprises (ACTE). The geographical target group of our consultations are small medium sized hotels from the hospitality industry. The target group for these consultations were hotels located in Nicosia Larnaka and Famagusta area (Protaras and Ayia Napa). However due to the COVID-19 pandemic many hotels in Larnaka were closed and some of the persons from the hotels that


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were open did not want to participate in the consultations. Therefore, we decided to carry out the consultations in hotels in Nicosia and Famagusta area. The aim of the consultations is to interview the employers that can be either the manager of a hotel or the HR manager of the hotel or even the manager or supervisor of a specific department in a hotel and get information on the skills gap of the employees, the skills that their employees need to have and to get their views on the Skills Swap idea. The initial contact was made by phone. During this contact we introduced the project and its aim and then we invited the employers to participate in the consultations. On this initial contact we set the date and time of the interview. This first initial contact was followed by an email. This email contained all information regarding the project together with the project’s web page and LinkedIn page and more information regarding the consultation and the consent form. The consultations were carried out either by phone or through SKYPE and Zoom meetings. The duration of each consultation was between 25-30 minutes. The topics and contents of Skill Swap project have formed the base for our consultations.


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For the employers, the questions asked were based on the impact that this Skills Swap idea will have on them.

Skills Swap addresses the skills gap and will fill in the skills gap At the beginning of the consultation, we asked the managers

Where are the skills gap either in your team or in the skills of individual employees?

What additional skills would it be useful for your staff to learn that they do not already have?

Skills Swap can increase the skills of the employees and therefore their motivation and retention We asked the managers to tell us

What additional skills would it be useful for your staff to learn that they do not already have?

Skills Swap introduces new learning and innovative work practices We asked the managers

Is it difficult for you to provide in-house training? If yes, why it was difficult? If no, was it practical and effective?

Have you ever done any Skill Swapping in your own hotel and if you did, did any problems occurred? In the case you did not do any Skills Swapping then would you like to try it in your hotel and in another hotel?

Skills Swap can enrich one’s experience with creative and innovative non-formal WBL methods

What kind of skills might you be able to offer to another company?

What can your organisation gain from Skills Swap?

Within the Skills Swap initiative, the employers can share costs / resources / placement opportunities etc. with consortium of other employers During the consultation, we asked the managers

What do you think the main barriers would be to organising something like this with a like-minded business?

If a Memorandum of Understanding by the Skills Swap coordinator would help minimise the barriers?

How do you think employers should be matched?

Though Skills Swap the employers will develop new business contacts and networks in the sector for further growth and support? We also asked the managers

Do you have any close working relationship with any other businesses that might have complementary skills they could offer?

Do you have another employer in mind (or even another branch of your own company) that you would be willing to test this idea out with?


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2.2 Hospitality sector overview At this section, a description of the hospitality sector per country is being reported with specific characteristics of the size of the sector, trends, skills shortages, initial indications for the location of skills swapping.

United Kingdom (RINOVA) For the purposes of this chapter, the Hospitality industry primarily refers to food and accommodation services industries. This means restaurants, cafes, pubs, bars, catering, hotels, camp sites and other accommodation. Most hospitality businesses are SMEs. 97% of hospitality businesses being micro or small businesses. The Department for Business Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) Small Business Survey 2019 reported that hospitality had higher proportions of SMEs led by minority ethnic groups and women compared to other sectors. 7% of hospitality SME employers were minority ethnic-led businesses, compared to 5% average across all industries. 21% of hospitality SMEs’ employers were led by women (compared to the 15% average). Impact of COVID-19 The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are only now becoming evident, and Hospitality has been one of the sectors hardest hit. Before the COVID-19 Pandemic (referred to now in this chapter as “Pre-COVID”), the Hospitality sector was growing rapidly in the UK employing 3.2 million people making it the third largest private sector UK employer, representing 10% of the economy. By September 2020, this figure had fallen to 2.38 million jobs and 6.9% of total UK employment. Restrictions on trading has majorly impacted Hospitality. Ongoing fixed costs (such as rent) and the further accumulation of debt alongside low or zero revenues, lack of cash reserves are all major concerns for the sector over the immediate future and it is likely that we will see the impact of this more heavily when furloughing ends and restrictions are lifted. A recent report by UK Parliament Commons Library (22 Feb–7 March 2021) states that almost 1 in 5 hospitality businesses (19%) had “low confidence” that their business will survive the next 3 months. On 31 January, 56% of eligible jobs in Hospitality were furloughed under the CJRS, compared to the 16% national average pan all UK industries. Throughout the pandemic, and at the time of writing, Hospitality is the highest sector with workforce employees on furlough leave in the UK. Furloughing refers to the UK Government Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) where the government provides payment support of workforce salaries with a bid to reducing the number of redundancies that would otherwise be made as a direct result of national or regional trading restrictions imposed by law. Monthly air passenger arrivals to the UK fell from February 2020 to April 2020 by 98.3%. This had a significant effect on Hospitality within London, which saw the largest fall in room occupancy of any English region from 2019 to 2020, with just 20% of rooms occupied in July 2020 compared with 90% in the same month in 2019. Occupancy in every English region declined dramatically. Room occupancy in the West Midlands, for example, declined to just 17% in April 2020, compared with 71% the previous year.


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It is important to note, however, other regions such as the Southwest of England, occupancy increased dramatically in August 2020. This is thought due to have been as the result of an increase in domestic tourism when lockdown restrictions were eased, the “staycation” phenomenon and the “Eat Out to Help Out” campaign. Staycation is a term used in the UK now meaning essentially “domestic tourism” i.e. holidays taken within the UK rather than abroad. During the relaxation of restrictions in June 2020, the Evening Standard newspaper reported that a staycation was booked every 11 seconds. Reviewing Hospitality as a whole, the UK sector averaged business levels (August spike aside) of 26% of their February income on an average month, February being traditionally one of the quietest months of trading in a year. Accommodation businesses saw an even sharper decline, reaching only levels of 9.3% of their February 2020 sales monthly across the year. Eat Out to Help Out Aug 2020 From 3 to 31 August, the UK government ran the Eat Out to Help Out campaign. This was designed to specifically help the Hospitality industry and encourage growth as trading restrictions were eased. Customers could get a 50% discount on food and non-alcoholic beverages consumed on Hospitality premises. The scheme was extremely successful with around 85,000 restaurants in the UK registering and taking part. Approximately 100 million meals were claimed to the value of £522 million. This was encouraging for the industry as it showed a quick recovery and that there is still very much consumer interest for Hospitality. On this basis, there is every reason to believe that the Hospitality sector will recover quickly after lockdowns are restricted in the future. Official figures showed more than half (55%) of claims were made by restaurants, while just under a third (28%) were made by pubs. Employment Despite government support with CJRS, there has been a significant reduction in employment within Hospitality. This above graph shows that Hospitality (which falls under the banner of “travel & tourism” for the purposes of this document) shows dramatic falls in employment (negative 21.5% overall) The number of people aged 25 to 34 years working full-time saw the largest fall, followed by people aged 16 to 24 years working part-time. Pay A large proportion of jobs across the hospitality sector are considered ‘low-skilled’ and pay less than £25,600, the implications of which are discussed below. The perception of long hours, low pay and difficult customers are putting millennials off considering Hospitality as a career path. A study by Morar HPI into 18 to 30-year-olds has highlighted the challenges the sector faces in attracting and retaining young talent. Although the research showed those already working in the sector enjoyed job satisfaction as high as those working elsewhere, only 17% of millennials said they would consider a long-term career in the sector. Industry Retention In 2019, UK Hospitality Recent statistics from UK Hospitality (the UK’s largest Hospitality trade association) revealed that the Brexit decision has had a huge impact on staff retention, and the uncertainty around immigration policy meant that 330,000 professionals nationwide were looking to leave Hospitality. This is unsurprising given that Pre-COVID 25% of Chefs, 75% of waiters and 33% of housekeepers were from the EU


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According to a YouGov survey in 2018, around 20,000 qualified chefs in the UK leave the profession every year – with relatively little new take up of the roles. Overall Hospitality is facing an extra 60,000 shortfall in workers year on year order to remain competitive. Overall Hospitality has a 70% of annual staff retention rate – which is 15% lower than the UK cross industry average of 85%. 30% of people are estimated to leave their Hospitality job in less than 1 full year. Skills Shortages Pre-COVID there was a recognisable skills shortage within Hospitality and there are indications that these skills shortages continue to exist and have even become greater as a result of the pandemic. A report in 2018, commissioned by The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), indicated that employers in the hospitality sector are the second most likely to report a shortage of candidates’ jobs. In 2017, 49% of employers in the hotels and restaurants sector revealed that the quality of candidates is the main reason for failing to fill vacancies. 31% of employers reported that there were a low number of candidates with the required skills. More recently in mid-2020, a report by Search Consultancy, found that that 68% of UK Hospitality businesses are worried about a skills shortage when they re-open. The report states that, currently, Hospitality businesses are on average at least 21% understaffed, with an approximate lead time to hire being over 3 months. Another area of concern for employers is that many people working within Hospitality during lockdown, have found alternate work outside the sector and are not certain to return once it reopens. In addition to this is the changes to immigration post-Brexit, workers coming to the UK must be paid a minimum of £25,600 per annum and the role must be skilled at A-level equivalent, or above. This does and will impact European workers within the sector significantly, particularly as this group of people traditionally filled the deficit of those roles left vacant by UK nationals. The Future One solution for low retention and the skills shortage is that Hospitality businesses must look at ways to upskill their existing employees, making their roles more flexible and versatile. This will be crucial when it comes to reopening and relaunch as the workforce will be significantly smaller than pre-COVID requiring that the workforce be multi-skilled in order to work in different areas of the business. The business will benefit from a more highly skilled staff member, and they are far more likely to retain staff who are able to see career growth and progression through new skills and learning opportunities available to them. The hospitality industry has long been known to experience a high turnover of staff, but upskilling should reduce this. Larger chain Hotels such as Hilton have long cross-skilled or “skill swapped” their work forces – this is where they train their employers in different areas of the Hotel so that they can learn more about the different functions of the Hotel ‘Pret A Manger’, for example, offers a comprehensive Apprenticeship scheme which provides a fully funded business management degree, and trains their Apprentices up from store staff level to managers and above. Employees will work in all areas of the day-to-day business as part of their training. There is no such provision for SMEs or smaller businesses in the UK and therefore the Skills Swap model being proposed is essential. This will enable smaller Hospitality businesses to become more attractive to an employer due to the training and learning benefits provided


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but also increase networking and collaboration between those businesses. There is evidence of the move to collaboration that can be seen via the activities of organisations such as Hoteliers Charter, Master Inn Holders MIDAS and charity Springboard. The Economic Insight “Hospitality and Tourism Workforce Landscape” report in June 2019 revealed that the main barrier to skills development was that training was not sufficiently targeted. This is, of course, answered by the Skills Swap model as employees will be trained in specific areas required by their employers and will be able to take those key learnings back to their employer for the benefit of all. The research also found that the best ways to attract and retain employees was to: • Develop a positive and supportive workplace. • Have a well-defined career progression plan from the start of employment. • Increase accessibility. All of these are addressed as these issues form part of the Skills Swap solution proposed. Digitalisation and Automation Rather than growing the industry’s talent pool, Hospitality employers are looking at ways to automate some activities or job roles and introduce digitalisation at their workplaces. This is particularly evident in training, where a BLE-approach allows managers and supervisors to focus on day-to-day operations, but also ensures that all new employees receive the same standard of training through an efficient introductory process. Digitalisation also lightens workload. By digitising paper processes and doing away with email and spreadsheets, employee duties take less time and need fewer individuals to complete tasks and activities. By digitising and automating some processes more focus can be dedicated to more rewarding tasks, such as improving customer services or financial planning. This will lead to increased productivity with less staff. Skills of the future The Economic Insight report revealed that the following skills are most likely to be sort after in the next 5- 10 years: • digital skills; • social and (‘soft’) skills; and • foreign language skills. The report states that as regards Digital skills, Hospitality employers were of the view that a greater use of technology in the workplace would require greater skills in that area. As a result, training on digital and technological areas will also need to increase. EHL Insights in their report “The Skills Gap in the Hospitality Industry” revealed in 2021 that soft skills will include: Communication, leadership, creative thinking, organisation, cultural awareness, flexibility, prioritisation and customer service etc. Employers are focusing on soft skills over hard skills as there is a belief that hard skills can be taught on the job. Soft skills, cannot. Conclusion The UK Hospitality industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic but there are good signs that there will be a healthy recovery. There will be a skill shortage, but this will be addressed by increased digitisation of the industry and by having a strong skills training focus that can be achieved via skills swap encouraging networking, collaboration and mutual business support.


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Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) When this overview is to be given of the Swedish hospitality industry, it has been inevitable to not take into account the current COVID-19 pandemic that prevails around the world and which very obviously has had and continues to have a great negative effect on this particular sector and the industries it consists of, in order for the overview to reflect the current reality of the sector. Due to this, it is relevant to state that the majority of the existing statistics and reports on the hospitality industry reflects the industry as it were before this crisis broke out, which is important to note specifically with reference to figures presented below. Hospitality as a part of tourism During 2019, the tourism consumption amounted to 306 billion SEK which was an increase by 0.7 percent from the previous year. The consumption by foreign tourists decreased by 2.5 percent during the same period, amounted just to under 100 billion SEK and accounted for 33 percent of the total consumption. The consumption by Swedish tourists was 206 billion SEK in 2019, an increase by 2.3 percent compared to 2018. The tourism consumption in Sweden is divided into several product groups. In 2019, consumption in trade accounted for 35 percent, followed by costs for housing and accommodation at 22 percent. Transport accounted for a total of 19 percent of the tourism consumption. In Sweden, tourism accounts for 2.5 percent of the GDP. The contribution to the national economy as a whole, amounted to 127 billion SEK or 2.5 percent of the GDP in 2019 which is an actual increase of 0.6 percent from the previous year. The tourist sectors share of the GDP has been relatively stable between 2017 and 2019, at around 2.5 percent meaning that the value for the Swedish society created by the tourism has followed the average development in the Swedish economy during these years. As a result of tourism, the employment in 2019 was the following: 102,000 annual manpower (converted from full time employments) and an average of 126,000 employed or 192 million hours worked. Comparing to 2018, the number of annual manpower decreased by 1 percent, the average number of employees increased by 1 percent and the number of hours worked remained unchanged. This can be interpreted as that there were slightly more people working in tourism in 2019 than the previous year, but that their working hours were less extensive. This may for example be due to an increase of seasonal employment or part time. During the period 2017-2019, the tourist sector accounted for 2.4 percent of the average number of employees and 2.3 percent of the hours worked. The employment from tourism has developed at the same rate as employment in the business sector as a whole. In The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth annual report on the tourist sector in 2019, the statistics show that the total number of employed in the sector as a whole, i.e. independent of sub-sectors, consist of an average number of persons employed, 291 911, of which: 159 422 are male, 132 489 are female and 116 655 are people of foreign background. The hospitality sector employs a high proportion of people of foreign background and young people and the sector has a relatively even gender distribution. However, the representation of women and foreign born in managerial positions is not in proportion to the total proportion of women and foreign-born in the sector. In the hotel- and restaurant industry, people in the age 16-24, constitutes 27.7 % of the proportion of employees in the industry. The Swedish hospitality industry consists of several different industries which to a smaller or greater extent includes such business activities that contribute to the tourism consumption. The trade industry as well as the hotel- and restaurant industry appear as the most influential within the hospitality sector. Regarding the proportion of tourism companies in each industry,


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hotel- and restaurants appear as the industry where the largest proportion are tourism-oriented (32 %) and both trade and transport as those with the second largest share of tourism companies (10% for both). Culture, sports activities and recreation are also highlighted as important parts of the hospitality industry. The hospitality sector as a whole is an important growth industry with a growing significance for Sweden’s economy and employment. Tourism consumption has increased sharply throughout the 2000s with the exception of a decline in connection with the economic crisis. Against the background of a strong growth in the hospitality industry in combination with a traditionally high staff turnover, as well as a large proportion leaving the industry each year, a strong supply of labour with the right competences and skills in relation to the needs to ensure continued positive development is needed. Several surveys and forecasts show that there is a major skills need in the hospitality sector. There are also clear signs that these needs in some cases are not met by the corresponding labour supply. In a report from The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth report from 2014 regarding the conditions and reality of companies within tourism, a quarter of the tourist companies responding to the survey stated that the availability of suitable labour constitutes a major obstacle for the company’s development and growth. Within the hospitality sector, it is the hotel- and restaurant industry where the skills need appears to be the largest and most evident in the next years. The Agency for Higher Vocational Education has mapped the Swedish counties’ own assessments in which occupational areas the need for vocational training is the largest. The most evident needs of high relevance to the hospitality industry in particular are the following, divided into profession-specific and general competence: Profession-specific competence • Chefs, kitchen and restaurant assistants, waiters • Other food processing (e.g. bakers, confectioners) • Receptionists • Outdoor activities, nature experiences, nature tourism General / business competence • Professionalization - entrepreneurship • International sales, communication and marketing • Concept development, product development • Leadership, work management, project management • Customer relations, service, hospitality Something that characterizes the hospitality industry is the difficulty of retaining staff. There are few people who stay in the hospitality industry for a long time and who choose to make a career out of it. There is a need to increase the attractiveness of the hospitality industry as a whole in order to attract the right skills to its various industries, but also to get people to stay, develop and contribute to the development of the sector. The hospitality sector and the COVID-19 pandemic Sweden’s leading business and credit reference agency, UC, states in May 2020 that of the negative effects affecting the economy as a whole, the service sector is particularly vulnerable. It is specifically transport, travel services, hotels and restaurants, culture and entertainment as well as parts of trade that have been deeply affected. During the period March-May in 2020, a total of over 76,000 people were notified of redundancies. A third (17,600) of these were found in the hotel- and restaurant industry and just under 9000 in the transport sector. Regarding bankruptcies, the statistics give a similar picture. The hotel and


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restaurant industry stand out as particularly hard hit by the effects of the pandemic, with half of the companies having lost more than 75 percent of their turnover. The employer organization Visita, representing 5,400 companies the Swedish hospitality sector, primarily hotels and restaurants, camping, amusement parks, accommodations, spas, tourist offices and ski resorts, presented in May 2020 a study that estimated 80,000 jobs (corresponding to 43,000 annual jobs) and 9000 companies in the hospitality industry is at risk of disappearing as an effect of the crisis.

Greece (DIMITRA) Greece's tourism sector is one of the main drivers of the country's economy. Greece attracted as much as 28.7 million visitors in 2018, making Greece one of the most visited countries in Europe and the world, contributing around 25% to the nation's Gross Domestic Product and generating some 16.5 billion euros in revenue. International tourism was the highest contributor, with around two thirds of arrivals in visitor accommodation coming from a foreign country. According to tourism ministry data and based on statistics from the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority, Fraport Greece, the Labour Ministry, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) and the Bank of Greece:

International tourist traffic grew by 10.6 percent in the January-November 2018 period, with 29.5 million visitors,

Direct tourism related revenue increased by 9.7 percent in the 11-month period to 16 billion euros,

The number of international air arrivals grew by 12.9 percent in 2018 to 20.7 million breaking all records to date. More than 2.4 million additional foreign tourists visited Greek destinations by air,

The number of international arrivals at Athens International Airport rose 19.4 percent to 5.7 million. An additional 1 million people travelled to Greek destinations via Athens in 2018 compared to 2017

Traffic to all destinations increased with the airports of Mytilini (43.1 percent), Anchialos (31 percent), Mykonos (24.8 percent), Kavala (23.3 percent), Kefalonia (22 percent), and Samos (21.7 percent) marking the best overall performance,

Approximately 1.5 million additional tourists visited Greek destinations by direct flights from airports abroad,

Duty-free transactions in 2018 rose by 27.9 percent against 2017,

Museum and archaeological sites earnings increased in the January-September 2018 period by 12.8 percent with the number of visitors up by 12.6 percent,

VAT-generated public revenue from hotels and accommodation services increased by 10.15 percent in June compared to the same month in 2017 and by 4 percent in July,

Greek hotel gains increased by 51.6 percent in 2017,

Tourism created a total of 288,369 jobs in the January-September 2018 period,

Construction activity picked up pace in the September 2017-August 2018 period compared to a year earlier driven by tourism growth and demand,

Travel agencies, tour operators, booking services and related activities saw their turnover rise in the second quarter of 2018 by 16.6 percent compared to the corresponding period of 2017,


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The average price per room at Athens hotels rose by 8.5 percent in the January-August 2018 period compared to the same period in 2017 with occupancy levels up by 2%

The prospects of Greek tourism are good within its structural limitations. Arrivals are increasing, the length of stay is not declining fast, average daily spending is constant, the number of significant tourist origins is going up. On the other hand, arrivals remain peaky, daily spending is modest by international standards and the same legacy destinations attract most of the demand. We briefly mention that tourism in recent years has been the bulwark for the Greek economy in the recession and the locomotive to reduce unemployment. In addition, tourism is one of the few areas that are of investment interest and due to its importance can be a key lever for the country's return to sustainable development. Due to the great dispersion of tourist destinations throughout the country, tourism plays a catalytic role in shaping income in many Regions of the country. On the contrary, tourism is very seasonal due to the fact that the holidays for Sun & Sea - but which is also the largest European product market - are the main tourist product of the country. The seasonality of arrivals and revenues demonstrates the dependence of our country's tourism on the dominant product - at European level Sun & Sea, as from the beginning to the end of the summer period (April - September) 80.2% of arrivals and 84.4% of revenue. Tourism and all its sub-sectors have been highly affected by the pandemic. The following part refers to the dynamics of the hospitality sector in Greece which is the referent area of this research. The dynamics of hospitality in Greece and COVID-19 impact The diffusion of the benefits of hospitality in Greece is divided into 17 branches of economic activity and 9 sectors. The average annual contribution of hospitality is around 1 billion euros, an amount measured only by the implementation of investments for the renovation of hotel units. At the same time, investments in hospitality (all accommodation and catering units) records an average annual contribution to the economy of the country of 1.5 billion euros. The amount of annual investments in renovations is about 1 billion euros, while the creation of new accommodation reaches 170 million euros. Also, the other investments in accommodation amount to 300 million euros per year and the investment funds in the catering units amount to 140 million euros. Also, hospitality is the first industry in the country in terms of job supply (1 in 4 jobs is a result of Hospitality). At the same time, Grant Thornton's study examining the evolution of hospitality turnover during the fiscal crisis concludes, among other things, that the sector was able to deal directly with the financial losses of the crisis, showing an increase in turnover when the whole economy had accumulative losses around a whole billion euros. In fact, it was one of the three main sectors that increased its turnover during the fiscal crisis by 3 billion euros, as the ability of the hospitality sector to respond immediately to the financial consequences of the financial crisis shows the high degree of its resilience to systemic crises. Furthermore, based on the degree of resilience to non-systemic crises (health crisis COVID-19), through the statistical correlation of the economic figures of Hospitality with demand figures (tourist traffic), there are fewer losses of turnover in the hospitality of 2020, as well as the ability of the sector to hold back the size of the losses created by non-systemic crises. According to the correlation, the turnover for 2020 would be 4.7 billion euros (with 8.4 billion euros in losses). However, it is reported that the real turnover was ultimately 30% higher (6.1 billion euros), essentially revealing the ability of the sector to withhold losses from non-systemic crises. It is noted that hospitality is characterized by the ability to quickly deal with


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and respond to external changes (recovery in the middle of the year), as it is characterized by higher absorption capacity compared to other sectors (trade, construction, financial activities, etc.). It is also noteworthy that the hospitality sector shows signs of rapid recovery in turnover losses resulting from external factors, while it has a higher ability to absorb negative financial cycles and immediate return on resources that are ultimately invested in it. The resilience of the industry to both systemic and non-systemic crises, such as COVID-19, shows that if it is further supported and strengthened in the near future, it will offer greater momentum to the country's economy in the long run. Tourism SMEs in the Greek market Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Greece represent 99,9% of the total private sector of the country which is slightly higher than the EU27 average in 2012 (99,8%, Source: Eurostat). More specifically, micro enterprises (1-5 employees and below €1mil. revenues) represent 96,6% of the private sector and 56% of the total employment of the Greek economy. The same percentages counts for the tourism and hospitality sector in Thessaly. According to Eurostat (2017), Greece has 277,400 tourism businesses, of which 97.6% are owned by SMEs in accordance with European Union regulations. Specifically, our country has about 11193,902 "Very Small Enterprises", 52,706 "Small Enterprises" and 24,133 "Medium Enterprises" which employ a total of 93.1% of those employed in the tourism sector. In tourism and hospitality sector in contrast with other sectors such as health services, agricultural products and retail which show the largest average decrease in their turnover as well as that he had a big problem of growth and competition, the SMEs showed durability, keeping it at a steady level in recent years. Employment in accommodation and catering between 2009 2018 increased by 12.7% with those employed in this sector amounting to almost 362 thousand (INSETE Intelligence 2018). In Greece, mostly small and medium hotel accommodations prevail and usually their size is reflected in their star rate. One star hotels are usually very small or small family businesses. Those of two stars are small or medium-sized units, of three are of medium scale, of four medium or large businesses and five stars are luxury large companies. As for the regions where these categories are located, the big hotel businesses with an average of 194 rooms are located in Attica and Crete. With 177 rooms there are hotels in Central Macedonia, while the Ionian Islands follow with 170 rooms on average. Small and medium-sized enterprises are more common in Cyclades and smaller areas (Bafiti, 2020). Regarding the percentage distribution of age groups in catering for the Region of Thessaly, we observe that throughout the period under review the highest percentages of employees are recorded at the ages of 25-34 years. Regarding accommodation, the highest shares are recorded at the ages of 25-34 years and 35-44 years. In conclusion, we can mention that in the Region of Thessaly, accommodation and catering offer greater employment opportunities at younger ages (15-34 years) than other sectors. The percentage of employees in the accommodation that are its graduates higher education in Greece is lower than in mainstream competing destinations in Europe. The seasonality, therefore, which shows the tourist product in Greece and the small (usually) size of hotel units, focuses part of the workforce with higher educational level in professions outside the tourism market. On the contrary, most of the employees have a low degree of specialization since the majority of tourism services are not in the knowledge-intensive sectors.


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Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) As mentioned in the previous point, in this section the Spanish partners of the project present the data of the hospitality sector in general (sectoral structure, production and employment). This data is shown at national level for both 2019 and 2020 with the dual intention of reflecting the specific weight that the hotel and catering industry had in our country before the pandemic, and the very serious impact that it has had on both the accommodation and catering subsectors. Salary structure Of the more than 300,000 establishments registered by the Spanish hotel and catering industry in 2019, nearly 35,000 correspond to accommodation sub-sector. Within this group, the great majority are hotels. In 2019, 16,792 hotel establishments were registered, 1.07% more than in the previous year. Other tourist accommodation options such as flats or rural houses also grew (by 6.11% with respect to the previous year), reaching 16,791 establishments. On the other hand, campsites, with a total of 1220 establishments in the country, and residences, hostels and guesthouses, with 1,059 establishments, suffered a reduction of 2.09% and 13.9% respectively with respect to the previous year. Food and beverage establishments were the most represented in relation to the total number of on-trade premises, with about 280,000 premises in the country, representing about 90% of the total. They also experienced a growth of 0.24% compared to the previous year. Bars were the most numerous within the catering group, with 181,230 establishments (2,076 less than the previous year). Restaurants were behind in volume, with nearly 81,000 establishments, a growth of 2.26% compared to 2018 but this sub-sector accounted for the largest percentage of production, with almost €50 billion, up 5.31% on the previous year. The collectives and catering sub-sector grew at a faster rate than restaurants, up 5.67%, and already accounted for just over 18,000 outlets. In the following table, we include a summary of all the already explained data: Table 1. Total hospitality services (accommodation / catering) – 2020, Spain

Type of establishment Total number of establishments

% of the total % annual variation

Accommodation 35.862 11,4 2,71

Hotels 16.792 5,3 1,07

Flats and rural houses 16.791 5,3 6,11

Camping 1.220 0,4 -2,09

Other 1.059 0,3 -13,9

Catering 280.078 88,6 0,24

Food establishments (restaurants y cafés)

80.736 25,6 2,26

Collectives and catering 18.112 5,7 5,67

Beverage establishments (bars)

181.230 57,4 -1,13

Total hospitality services

315.940 100 0,52

Source: Anuario de la Hostelería de España 2020. Hostelería de España. Own compilation.


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Although official figures are not yet available, forecasts suggest that by 2020 up to a third of the more than 300,000 hospitality establishments that existed in 2019, i.e. between 85,000 and 100,000, could have disappeared, which is undoubtedly a shocking figure. Production The hospitality sector accounted for 6.2% of total national production in 2019, reaching 129,341 million euros, 4.63% more than the previous year. Of this 6.2%, 4.7% corresponds to catering and the remaining 1.5% to accommodation. The following table gives a more detailed breakdown: Table 2. Total hospitality services (accommodation / catering) – 2019, Spain

Type of establishment 2019 data % of the total % variation 2018

Accommodation 31.281 24,2 5,4

Hotels 26.923 20,80 5,2

Flats and rural houses 3.224 2,5 10,07

Camping 766 0,6 2

Other 369 0,3 -9,34

Catering 98.060 75,8 4,39

Food establishments (restaurants y cafés)

49.832 38,5 5,31

Collectives and catering 11.218 8,7 8,64

Beverage establishments (bars)

37.010 28,6 1,99

Total hospitality services 129.341 100 4,63 Source: Anuario de la Hostelería de España 2020. Hostelería de España. Own compilation.

As far as 2020 is concerned, it is worth noting that in April and May, the main months of the confinement caused by the COVID-19 break-in in Spain, hospitality sector turnover fell by more than 90%. According to the available data, between January and September 2020 the hospitality sector drops 50.3%, 42.8% the restaurants and catering subsector and 65.2% in the accommodation subsector. This means that in 2020 as a whole the drop in the hospitality sector turnover compared to the previous year will be more than 50%, with losses that could reach up to 67 billion euros. Employment The average employment reached in the hospitality industry as a percentage of the total Spanish employed population was 8.7% in 2019 and it was the predominant branch in the tourism sector, accounting for 65% of those employed in this sector in 2019. The hospitality industry ranked third in terms of employment with more than 1.71 million employed workers in 2019 out of the 19.7 million in the country's economy as a whole. In the following table, we can see the number of employed persons according to their professional status (salaried or self-employed) in the sector by activity:


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Table 3. Number of employees according to their professional status – 2019, Spain

Total professional

situation Salaried employee Self-employed

Total tourism industry 2.673.520 2.199.044 473.034

Hospitality: 1.715.379 1.396.766 317.292

Accommodation services 407.804 383.223 23.948

Food and beverage services

1.307.576 1.013.542 293.344

Passenger transport 317.596 250.728 66.868

Other activities of the tourism industry

640.545 551.550 88.873

Total activities services sector

14.941.019 12.704.114 2.229.906

Total activities at national level

19.779.312 16.670.538 3.101.030

Source: Turespaña. Año 2019. Own compilation.

Compared with these figures for 2019, it is worth noting that the average employment in the hospitality sector as a percentage of the total employed population in Spain is 7.17% in 2020 compared with 8.7% in 2019. This might not seem to represent a significant reduction, however, it is if we take into account that the total number of employed persons in Spain has fallen from almost 20 million to just over 14 million. By activity, in 2020 we see that catering (food and beverage services) accounted for more than 850.000 employed workers and accommodation services for approximately 250.000, figures that represent a reduction of 34.7% and 37.6% respectively. The following table shows these figures in more detail: Table 4. Number of employees according to their professional status – 2020, Spain

Total professional

situation Salaried employee Self-employed


Hospitality: 1.107.602 879.582 227.630



852.955 641.846 210.802



460.231 390.544 69.648


10.847.681 9.163.512 1.679.181


14.366.338 12.048.756 2.311.700


Regarding the type of labour agreement, of the total employment in 2019, in the hotel and catering sector 64.15% of the workers have open-ended contracts, while 35.85% have a temporary contract. The following table shows the number of employees according to the type of contract by activity:


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Table 5. Number of employees according to the type of contract by activity – 2019, Spain

Total number of

salaried employees Open-ended contract Temporary contract


Hospitality: 1.396.766 896.054 500.712



1.013.542 631.966 381.577



551.550 369.970 181.580


12.704.114 9.474.916 3.229.197


16.670.538 12.293.595 4.376.943


In 2020, the percentage of workers with open-ended contracts in the hospitality sector increased to 71.13%, while workers with temporary contracts in the hospitality sector account for 28.87%. Table 6. Number of employees according to the type of contract by activity – 2020, Spain

Total number of

salaried employees Open-ended contract Temporary contract


Hospitality: 879.582 625.681 253.901



641.846 438.710 203.136



390.544 289.740 100.804


9.163.512 7.042.358 2.121.155


12.048.756 9.172.052 2.876.704


In terms of the age of the employed, in 2019 the lowest percentage is represented by young people under 30 years, being the 23.97% in the hospitality industry. The following table shows the number of employed persons by age and activity: Table 7. Number of employees by age and activity – 2019, Spain

Total 16-29 Years old 30-44 Years old 45 years old or more

Total tourism industry

2.673.520 590.552 1.038.770 1.044.198

Hospitality: 1.715.379 411.163 668.864 635.352

Accommodation services

407.804 58.802 174.058 174.945


1.307.576 352.362 494.807 460.407


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Passenger transport

317.596 31.666 108.726 177.204

Other activities of the tourism

industry 640.545 147.724 261.179 231.642


14.941.019 2.186.186 5.887.037 6.867.796


19.779.312 2.740.370 7.913.970 9.124.972

Source: Turespaña. Año 2019. Own compilation

In 2020, the percentage of young people under 30 in the hospitality sector drops to 22.31%. Table 8. Number of employees by age and activity – 2020, Spain

Total 16-29 Years old 30-44 Years old 45 years old or more


1.785.687 354.326 690.149 741.213

Hospitality: 1.107.602 247.112 421.500 438.991


254.647 36.146 106.989 111.513


852.955 210.966 314.511 327.478

Passenger transport

217.854 16.724 73.572 127.558


industry 460.231 90.490 195.078 174.663


10.847.681 1.470.926 4.165.314 5.211.442


14.366.338 1.857.544 5.585.942 6.922.852


Regarding the level of education, in 2019, in the hospitality sector, 8.62% have primary education, 69.35% have secondary education and 21.63% have higher education. In the following table this data is shown in detail: Table 9. Number of employees by education level – 2019, Spain

Total Primary education Secondary education

Higher education


2.673.520 174.862 1.698.544 792.353

Hospitality: 1.715.379 147.833 1.189.532 371.095


407.804 31.626 245.776 128.022


1.307.576 116.207 943.756 243.073

Passenger transport

317.596 13.659 205.053 98.328


industry 640.545 13.369 303.958 322.930


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14.941.019 621.688 7.117.512 7.169.862


19.779.312 1.028.305 10.032.598 8.662.445


In 2020, the percentage of people with primary education in the hospitality sector is 7.99%, the percentage of people with secondary education is 69.88% and those with higher education is 21.68%. Table 10. Number of employees by education level – 2020, Spain

Total Primary education Secondary education

Higher education


1.785.687 105.331 1.117.802 557.277

Hospitality: 1.107.602 88.536 774.026 240.151


254.647 17.252 157.633 78.920


852.955 71.285 616.394 161.230

Passenger transport

217.854 8.090 136.420 73.239


industry 460.231 8.705 207.356 243.886


10.847.681 404.763 5.026.300 5.390.785


14.366.338 675.658 7.120.474 6.519.736


Cyprus (EDITC) Cyprus tourism industry, with almost 4 million tourists the last few years, is the 40th most popular destination in the world. Tourism industry generated a revenue of over €2.7 million in 2018. With that number, this industry contributes majorly to growth and development of Cyprian Economy, approximately 10% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). In 2019, the number of tourists reached 3.866.447 of which 3.697.055 used the hospitality sector of the republic. The sector consists of 239 hotels from 1 up to 5 stars, 152 organized apartments category A, B and C, 18 touristic villages, 114 touristic villas, 4 hotels without stars, 81 touristic departments and 184 traditional houses recognized by Cyprus Hotel Association and almost of 44.327 employees. Growth in tourist traffic reached 8% in 2018 while in 2019, it had a much smaller increase of almost 4%.


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Figure 2. Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) results for year 2018. Division of the Hospitality sector

Other than the accommodation sector in tourism the following can be considered to be important subsectors: - Catering and entertainment - Travel agencies and tour operators - Tourist guides Additionally, the following affect the tourism sector in Cyprus and are growing sectors:

In an effort to diversify and enhance the island’s tourism infrastructure while attracting the growing nautical tourism, multiple marinas have been constructed or are being planned. Future developments are expected to greatly increase the island’s nautical tourism capacity while doubling the number of available berths. The Ayia Napa Marina with an estimated investment of €220 million, is currently under construction and expected to be fully completed in 2021. Multiple multi-million developments are in the planning stage including the Paralimni, Paphos and New Larnaka Marinas, expected to exceed €1 billion in total investments (KPMG Cyprus Hospitality Report, Annual report outlining the key trends and major drivers of the Cyprus Hospitality Market)

Initially introduced in Cyprus in early 90s and with the introduction of the gold policy in 2004, the golf industry grew in early 21st century to result in four golf courses currently operational, all of which are located in the Paphos district. These four golf courses have an international 18-hole standard status. Two of them have an operational resort offering real estate development, hotel accommodation and leisure facilities in addition to golf. The rise of Cyprus as a golf destination may have an impact on both the tourism and hospitality sectors, attracting individuals of higher disposable income level. (KPMG Cyprus Hospitality Report, Annual report outlining the key trends and major drivers of the Cyprus Hospitality Market)

The following are also worth noting:

Cyprus hosts more than 8000 international weddings per year

More than 5000 divers visit the island every year

59,915,1

9,9

0,510,6

4

Cyprus Hospitality Sector - Accommodation

Hotels Organized apart.,rooms

Villas Rent House

Friends Airbnb


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Demographics and statistics related to the employment in the sector The men and female that worked in the sector are shown in the following table (average from the four quarter of 2019) Table 11. Labour force by gender. 4th quarter of 2019, Cyprus

Sector Males Females Totals

Accommodation and Food Service Activities

(average employees from the four quarters of 2019)

18,302

19,559

37862

Total employees 221253 195225 416478

Percentage 8.27% 10.02% 9.09%

Source: Labour force 4th quarter of 2019 study, Statistical Service

The female workers are more than the male workers in the Accommodation and food service activities. Regarding the age of the employees, there is no statistic regarding the age of the employees in the hospitality sector. However according to the Statistical service, the age of the general population that work in all sectors for 2019 are the following: Table 12. Labour force by gender and age. 4th quarter of 2019, Cyprus

Age Male Female Totals per age group

15-24 16,809 13,401 30,210

25-34 60,873 57,351 118,223

35-44 53,591 49,603 103,193

45-54 46,684 41,723 88,407

55-64 36,684 26,757 63,441

65+ 10,021 2,982 13,004

Totals 416,478 Source: Labour force for 2019 study, Statistical Service

As we can notice for the table above most of the employees in all sectors are firstly from age group 25-34, secondly from age group 35-44 and thirdly fromage group 45-54 and fourthly from age group 55-64 . Since we do not have statistical information for the hospitality sector we assume that this statistic holds for this sector as well. Regarding employees with disabilities in this sector there is no recent statistical data available. However according to the Report on the employment of disabled people in European countries, in 2007 Annual Report (Republic of Cyprus, 2007) It is reported that in 2007, 4.3% of disabled people were employed in the primary sector (i.e. agriculture), 22.7% in the secondary sector (i.e. industry) and 73% in the tertiary sector (i.e. services). These percentages remained similar since 2002. However there was no data on the percentage of


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disabled people working in the hospitality sector. Therefore, if we assume that hospitality sector is included in the service sector this means that disabled people work in hotels in jobs suitable for them like phone centres or reception areas or in any administrative work. Another demographic that is important for the hospitality sector in Cyprus is that there is a large number of foreign workers in the hospitality sector. At the end of January 2019 there were 6,458 foreign workers employed in this sector, with 907 employed in Nicosia, 1,222 in Limassol, 654 in Larnaka, 2,996 in Paphos and 679 in the Famagusta. As PASYXE manager says “there is a high demand for hotel staff but there is low supply. This is the reason why hotels employ foreigners sometimes with no skills. During high seasons they employ foreign students.” Are there any particular skills shortages? In which areas? As per the current statistics, it appears that 61,8% of tourists were absolutely satisfied from their accommodation and 28,7% were very satisfied. These numbers reflect the satisfactory work and the real investments on the sector.

Figure 3. Tourists’ Opinions about Accommodation, Cyprus

Similarly, a substantial number highlights the facilities of restaurants. Food and beverage facilities have a 58,6% of totally satisfied customers plus 31,2% to be very satisfied. A full picture of the results shows that 89,8% of tourists were very satisfied.

Figure 4. Cyprus: tourists’ opinions about restaurants, food and beverage facilities

As these results give almost an extremely good image about accommodation and hospitality in Cyprus there is an area where there is inadequacy behind and creates disparity with the overall picture. If we take a glimpse in 2018 results of the State Department of Tourism about “what are the things you didn’t enjoy in Cyprus in the hotels” there is a 30,3% of bad or poor

58,60%31,20%

8,30% 1,50% 0,40%

Totally Satisfied Very Satisfied Satisfied

Little Satisfied No Satisfied

58,60%31,20%

8,30% 1,50% 0,40%

Totally Satisfied Very Satisfied Satisfied

Little Satisfied No Satisfied


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service, rudeness staff or unprofessional service. There is also a 27.50% of no good cleanliness of rooms and 12.9% with low quality of the hotel’s restaurant. In addition, there is another 22,7% regarding imbalance between Quality and Cost. Taking into account, that there was a 53% where tourists were not satisfied about service, we can say with certainty that one of two tourists did not enjoy a qualitative service. If we take a glimpse in 2018 results of the State Department of Tourism about “what are the things you didn’t enjoy in Cyprus in places of food and drink” there is a 31.30% of low or not stable quality of food,25% regarding imbalance between Quality and Cost 17.6% of limited choices of food, 28.65% bad service in restaurants The above figures show that:

The is lack in customer service skills among employees

The employees lack skills in delivering the best quality possible to the client

Employee’s lack of cleaning skills

There is lack of knowledge of the trend in gastronomy and people’s eating habits. Are there problems with staff recruitment/retention? There is a problem in recruiting staff in the hotel sector. According to the general manager of PASYXE, the rapid development of the hotel industry leads to increased needs for personnel. As he said, "The pressure on tourism companies is enormous so that we can recruit well, trained staff and also support staff that will free up time for industry professionals and well-trained staff to provide the high levels of services provided, which are required by the experienced and well-traveled tourist ". As he stated however” there are 2500 available work positions, but they cannot find the personnel”. There is shortage of staff in the hospitality sector. The reason for this shortage among the Cyprus population is due the seasonality. The island's hospitality market is characterised by its high seasonal dependence, with the majority of tourist arrivals (75,9%) being in the period between May and October. The main reasons for the seasonality are: • Lack of air capacity and flight connectivity during the off-peak months • Expansion of the touristic product beyond the traditional “sun and sea” • Underutilisation of infrastructure, especially during the off-season months Another reason for the shortage is that Cypriot skilled personnel are not many and they do not wish to work in the hospitality sector because working in this sector is difficult. The work is difficult because the staff work with shifts and there are no holidays. In addition, the salaries offered are usually low. Even if Cypriot employees are employed in the sector is very difficult to retain them. As soon as they find an easiest job with better pay they leave their position. The hospitality sector also employs many foreigners (from European countries and third countries) and foreign students in order to fill the work positions. However, foreigners usually do not have the skills to perform the work, they wish to combine work with holidays and are not committed to their work. Again, is difficult to retain the foreign workers since they change jobs very often. There is no data on any initial indications for the location of Skills Swapping.


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2.3 The view from the consultations In this section, the partnership presents the findings from the interviews for the basic skills swap research for IO1. This section is separated into two main aspects:

the employer’s perspective: issues in relation to the skills set of their staff, apprenticeships/work-based learning, skills gap, in-house training

the Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions: interest of the employer enterprises, barriers, memorandum aspect, benefits, ideal period, recommendations/ ideas

United Kingdom (RINOVA)

2.3.1 The employer perspective (UK)

What issues do employers face in relation to skill set of their staff? How do employers try to overcome these issues now? One thing that all employers agree on is that any form of training that is procured from an external provider is expensive and has to be budgeted for, the more specialist the training the greater the expense - especially where this leads to formal qualifications. For many smaller employers and SMEs this is budget that they just don’t have available. Many employers will, therefore, initially look to address their training needs internally and use their budgets wisely where required. Our interviews showed that employers are already addressing additional training needs that have arisen out of the pandemic i.e. COVID safety and new routines to be adopted when they re-open. Some staff will have been furloughed for 14 months by the time they return to work, so some of their operational skills may have been forgotten or become rusty. For this reason, some employers are already taking steps to address these gaps through virtual training. The Athenaeum Hotel are putting on a virtual training event every day at 3pm for all staff to join, some are fun, others are more practical or departmental, but the whole point is to re- engage with staff, who have been out of the workplace for many months. What do the employers think of the continuous professional development of their staff? All employers interviewed completely agree that the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of their staff is highly important, however, sometimes the issue is convincing the staff in question, that additional training is needed, that causes to the problem. One employer with staff who have been employed 20 years plus often finds it hard to convince them that they need to keep learning and developing their skills. There was probably never a better time to demonstrate this but now. As part of the pandemic this employer has lost 54% of his staff due to redundancies, some of those staff now need to find other opportunities either within hospitality sector or elsewhere; how current their skills are and how willing they are to learn could have a huge impact on how long it takes them to secure employment. Embracing new technology for some older workers seems to be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. How effective do they think apprenticeships/work-based learning are? Some of the employers interviewed did not have any experience of taking on apprentices but were curious to find out more and how this might work for them. Two of the representatives of the largest employers interviewed were products of the apprenticeship route and they now hold senior roles in Human Resources (HR) and as general manager of Hotels. It should be noted neither of them were educated in the UK, so were not products of the UK


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Apprenticeship system. The apprenticeship route in the UK is often seen in some sectors as second best and that those who come via this route are not as worthy as those who come via A’ level or degree routes. Both these senior members of staff whole heartedly want to invest within their organisations by recruiting apprentices for every department but often they lack the correct contacts and sufficient information to be able to convince their managers and heads of departments to go head. As well as apprenticeships some employers also offer short-term work placements and others longer term paid internships. One employer runs an outreach programme in supporting and upskilling young people with special needs in housekeeping. Another employer, a charity, takes on young people with special education needs for 6 months training in food hygiene and food preparation skills, but they often struggle to find them employment and appropriate destinations beyond this. One employer who has undertaken a lot of recruitment for the hospitality sector, as a consultant, feels that up to 75% of young people recruited via apprenticeships are not in the right role and do not have real understanding of the sector and the requirements for anyone wishing to succeed within it. He felt strongly that schools and colleges need to work more closely with employers to get a better understanding of the sector, the personal qualities it requires (resilience was high on his list), and what the requirements are for entry. Schools have also said the same thing, so clearly there is some work to be done here to bring these two parties together for closer collaboration. Sadly, not many of the employers interviewed had anything positive to say about work-based learning and the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) route, which has failed to take off significantly in the Hospitality sector in the UK, with the exception of one employer who trained to deliver training and assessed in his workplace. Additional Skills and skills gap One of the interesting skills gaps that employers identify is in attitudes to flexibility and job roles. It was recognised that staff from the UK can often be more rigid in their perspective of what their job role is and were inclined to be less flexible when asked to do something they consider to be outside of their job description. Whereas staff recruited from other European countries are more willing to adapt and cover things that are strictly not on their JD. Where employers have had to reduce their staff numbers due to COVID through redundancy and furlough, they are now finding that staff need to be more flexible and adapt to the changed working environment and perhaps do tasks that are not considered to be part of their role, some are adapting to this more readily where others are clinging to the more traditional idea of their job description. Employers needed staff to see that this flexibility across a broader range of skills can be seen a positive thing with staff gaining additional skills which can help them to progress and perhaps gain a promotion in another area of the business later on. With regards to skills gap most employers try to address this from within by using more experienced staff to train and support their staff teams, so in effect they are already operating internal skills swaps with their own staff. Kemi Akinola from Be Enriched, a charity that trains young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), says that there is significant gap for Young Professionals (YP) at this level. Many young people with SEND cannot access apprenticeship level training as there is a requirement for them to have minimum Maths and English qualifications at level 2, which many of them would not be able to achieve given their needs. However, ironically and frustratingly these same young people would be perfectly able to get a job in the hospitality sector with certain duties.


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The City of London Club have several staff who have many years of service under their belts – while this loyalty and reliability is of course a good thing, it can present other problems, as some of these staff can be very ‘stuck in their ways’. This can lead to long standing members of staff refusing to adopt improved ways of doing things using technology or processes that would actually make their jobs easier, so a change in culture is also something that is going to be required for some employers to adapt to the ‘new normal’. During out interviews we were able to identify a potential skill swap that could be effective with another employer interviewed to address this. Some employers are offered training for staff through some of their specialist suppliers that form part of their existing supply chain, i.e. Wine, cheese cigars etc. where the need arises for formal training they would approach specialist provider like the ‘Wine and Spirits education Trust’. This is in effect a kind of masterclass provision that is being offered informally and is also a form of skill swap – albeit in one direction only in these cases. More so than practical skills, Employers were quick to point out and in general agreement that where staff lack certain attitudes and behaviours this is the biggest issue they have to contend with - as these things are really hard to teach. Teaching by example is perhaps the most effective way to manage these kinds of skills gap. Another relevant issues for employers who source staff from the EU is the language barrier, if staff come in at entry level and want their careers to progress, they have to improve their written and spoken English language and employers need support with this for their staff. One employer actually offers a business skills writing course for staff which is very popular, she recognised that there are often very different approaches in different countries to how an email or letter should be composed/signed off and she wants her staff to get the tone and construction of this correct for internal and external communications. Recruitment processes This topic wasn’t covered in the original brief or topic guide but is something that most employers commented on during their interviews. Most employers have a very traditional approach to the recruitment process but often agree that having the right attitude in this sector is much more important than formal qualifications, which can always be gained on the job. One employer, Rise have a very unique hospitality offer, they recruit purely based on personality and behaviours they do not insist on formal qualifications, most of the people who work for them are young and want to prove themselves. They value people-skills like empathy and communication, which are key to the success of their business offer and the businesses that use their services, rapport and understanding their customers is important in ensuring that they continue to use the available services.

2.3.2 The Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions (UK) What is the level of interest in the skill swap idea? What do they hope to offer? Do they have a company in mind that they would like to rest the skills swap idea? All of the employers expressed an interest in the Skills Swap idea and are keen to see how it will work, as already described some experience of implementing something similar either internally, informally or externally. Some of those with experience may be willing to act as mentors to other employers. Some were clearer about what they could offer and others not so, certainly chef and front-of-house of skills are highly desirable and something that employers are eager to swap and learn from other employers. Certainly, Rise have some very alternative training and insights


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that they could offer around recruiting, training and company culture. Be enriched, were not 100% clear what they could offer at this stage, but it was useful to also meet with employers who were less easily able to see how the model could be adapted to their situation. From an interviewers’ perspective we felt confident they could offer some really useful guidance for employers about the benefits of employing a person with a disability and also making sure that employers did not miss out on the opportunity to employ someone suitable because they did not have an understanding of how to adapt to accommodate certain needs. Employers also mentioned swapping with 5-star restaurants and hotels, which for many smaller companies would enable them to offer a level of expertise and opportunity that they couldn’t cover in house. Apparently, the Hilton Hotels are very good at offering YP with SEND opportunities to grow and learn. At the current time not all companies were able to think about which members of their team might be appropriate to take part in a skill swap as this is not necessarily something that they have considered until now. Also, with the industry still in lockdown and plans for the re-opening of the sector only on the horizon, employers’ priorities will be to find ways to effectively start to trade in the immediate future. What might the main barriers be?

Staff who have Learning Difficulties and Disabilities / Special Educational Needs (LDD/SEN) finding a willing employer to swap with

Trying to do too much too soon - pace will be key - not too much pressure to make it happen and an emphasis on putting the employer and employees needs first and not just the projects timetable.

Post pandemic will employers have the time and inclination to take part in this when they are trying to re-build their business? Timing will be crucial to the success of the skill swap model.

Employers trust – other employers not poaching staff during the swap – with churn such an issue in the industry already, willingly sending your staff to another employer for a period of time is not without its risks and protocols would need to be in place.

Time taken to organise the skill swap in an industry that is usually working at 100% capacity and at full speed.

Willingness of staff to attend swaps to enhance their skills – buy in from the participants will be essential as they will be out of their comfort zone and maybe challenged by new tasks. They may also have to travel further or work different hours for a short time.

Include mutual understanding and matching within industry – so fine dining v Travelodge they can both benefit and something to offer.

Agreements that are too rigid could turn employers off of this idea – need to be flexible to allow for different types/size of employers.

How do employers think the matching should take place? One thing that all employers agree on is that the buy in of the staff is paramount, if a staff member is not interested or willing then this just won’t work and could cause embarrassment for the employer sending the staff member or if they do not engage or attend as required. Some employers feel that the matching should be with similar types of employers whereas others can see the benefits of swapping with a very different types and size of employer; you might all do the same things i.e. cleaning, housekeeping but everyone will have their own approach and different standards required for their guests and budgets.


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It is therefore clear that different employers have a different view of what might work but the important thing will be to match like-minded employers. What needs to be included in the Memorandum? All employers agree that there has to be some form of written agreement in place so that staff realise that this is formal process and take it seriously. In the words of our employers, staff need to know it’s not an opportunity to skive off!’ However, while the Skill Swap needs to be coached in a formal agreement and well structured, Employers also feel that caution should be operated in the flexibility of this anything too rigid that dictates that swaps must be a certain length of time etc. will be a real turn off for employers. The points covered in the memorandum would include: • What is a Skills Swap? • How does it work? • A clause about poaching /recruiting staff during the swap? (To be discussed) • Who is involved in the Skills Swap? • How long will the Skills Swap be? • What are the aims and objectives of the swap? • Named employer and staff members agreeing to the swap • Start date and time • Who to report to • Address, contact and travel directions, map Preparation before the swaps take place As above a clear agreement between the employers should be in place that identifies who is engaging in the swap, how long it will last, what the aims and objectives are and the expected outcomes. Staff need to be primed and buy in to the idea and the process. Before the swap starts, staff should have an Induction /Introduction to the employer and their mentor. Issues around insurance may need to be considered but should be covered through their liability insurance but need to checked out. Induction and Introduction along with familiarisation with a buddy, mentor and the workplace are considered essential if the process is going to work. How long should swaps last? The answer to this question was anything from half a day to several weeks, it will very much be dictated by the type of training and how long it might take. Where it is more than a few days there was a suggestion that perhaps it could happen one day over several weeks – in the form of a day release. We have to consider that if a chef is doing a swap who will do their job whilst they are away for their workplace? Although, the responses were varied to this question, what was very clear is that it will be a key element when matching employers to be sure that both employers have the same expectation and agree on the way in which the skill swap will operate. We do not feel it is necessary for the project co-ordinators to decide on a pre-set structure or time requirement but it is essential that all employers involved agree with the structure and length of their individual skill swap model. What can they offer and what can they gain through skills swapping? Do they have any ideas about who they might swap with? The following are a list of the responses gained across the interviews: Offer:

Front of house

Kitchen - chef skills


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Housekeeping

Recruitment

Culture change

Concierge duties

Restaurant management

Supporting people with disabilities

Coaching

Work life Balance for entrepreneurs/business owners Would like to again:

sharing ideas – same task different approaches

Sommelier skills

Concierge skills

Adapting to different business model form day service to 24 hr service

Different perspectives on recruitment and HR practices

New things that might be relevant now in post COVID, Brexit re-opening

Work life balance for entrepreneurs – The Reality check Who might be suitable swap?

Restaurants

5 star hotels

Small hotel chains

Hospitality sub-sectors beauty, leisure and health These ideas still need to be developed with the employers as this is a very new concept to most of them and will need further discussion. This will form part of our on-going collaborative working with the Employer networks. What should happen after the swap takes place? One thing which hasn’t been mentioned in the topic guide is the need for some form of feedback process after the swaps have taken place so that we can measure the effectiveness and what progress the individuals have made as a result. This will be essential if we are going to embed a process of continual review and improvement into the piloting phase.

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) As the consultations were conducted with a range of people active in different industries within the hospitality sector, the answers to the questions differed to some extent depending on the role, industry and experience of the interviewees. To ensure that the interviewees were given the opportunity to answer the questions posed on the basis of their own experience, expertise and knowledge of the hospitality sector and its sub-sectors, the approach has been to first present the Skills Swap project with the main objectives, aims and purpose of this initiative. The interviewees were introduced to the method of exchanging skills, the ‘skills swap concept’, that our project is developing together with an illustrative example of what such an exchange of skills between employers or businesses could look like. The following is a summary of the main findings of the consultations.


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2.3.1 The employer perspective (SE) Main identified skills gap Some of the concerns raised by the interviewees in relation to the level of skills of staff within the businesses as well as the hospitality industry in general, related to the difficulty in finding staff who have a genuine passion for their profession. For many people, jobs within the hospitality sector are a first or second job and a route into the world of work and the labour market. Some people that are entering the different industries in hospitality view their time in the sector as temporary and it is common for staff to have a general but conscious approach that after a certain time they will change professions or even leave the sector altogether. This seems to be a common thread through many sub-industries in the sector, as confirmed by the research describing the sector's traditionally high staff turnover. In contrast to this, it is also highlighted that many employees in the sector take advantage of the great opportunities to ‘climb’ in working roles within businesses, since there are many such possibilities available for those willing to invest in a career in the hospitality industries. It is also pointed out that the career opportunities, which may be characteristic to hospitality industries, need to be further emphasised in order to attract more people into the sector who are willing to develop, progress and advance within the many different businesses that it contains. On the other hand, there is a certain acceptance that companies in the hospitality can be the first link between the individual and the labour market and that it is natural for people to move on to higher education or other sectors with different working environments and conditions. Night work, inconvenient working hours and weekend jobs can be very exhausting which are some of the challenges faced by hospitality businesses in relation to retaining existing staff and attracting new workers. Concerning the level of skills of staff, it is highlighted that competencies and skills making the employees able to work in different areas of a business are valued by employers. This is partly because it can be a way of providing to the staff more alternate working patterns and avoiding that the staff becomes worn out by the monotony of their work role. One of the interviewees who has experience in the hotel industry suggests that even if there are opportunities for staff to try working in several different departments within the hotel, that it could be a good idea to create more job roles that are specifically including tasks in several different areas of a company or business. The interpersonal skills of individuals are always sought after by employers, which is not necessarily specific to the hospitality industry. Social skills and competencies of staff are important in any industry where the customer is put in focus. However, in hospitality industries the social skills of staff become extremely important as the customer is always in the centre and the customer experience is in many cases the basis for the continued success of the business. It is therefore often not enough to ‘only’ have profession-specific knowledge and experience. Work-based learning Based on the findings of these consultations, there is a consensus that traineeships and apprenticeships are a very important and the employers in general have many positive experiences from offering apprenticeships. When people enter a business through apprenticeships, they have the opportunity to get a more holistic and comprehensive overview of the whole operation, which becomes very beneficial and can higher the chances of later on getting an employment within the company. If employees have a greater overall understanding of how the whole company operates, it is often easier to give the customer a good overall experience, from the customer's arrival to their departure. Traineeships and


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apprenticeships can also give trainees the chance to learn the different tasks involved in a job role under less stressful conditions than staff that is hired directly for the same role. Apprenticeships and these kind of work-based learning opportunities thus become a very effective way for people to enter the business in a way that can lead to employment later on. The aspects of matching Something that needs to be considered while developing the skills swap method is that for many companies and businesses, perhaps even more so in the case of SMEs, the employer needs to have the entire workforce in place for the daily operations to be manageable, and the companies would therefore be unable to let even one member of the staff group go, without some part of the business suffering. It therefore is of great importance that companies are given plenty of time to plan for such an arrangement. For organisations with a relatively small workforce, where each person plays a key role in the day-to-day running of the organisation, it is therefore optimal or even essential that the desired exchange of skills and competencies takes place immediately, i.e. that when an employee leaves for another organisation for the set period of time, another person comes in during the same period so that the organisation is not short of manpower while the employees are elsewhere to learn new skills and competences. In order to make such an exchange of skills between businesses, there needs to be a match between the companies that are going to part take in a swap, to ensure that the businesses can complement each other's skills needs and gaps in the best way possible when the exchange or swap takes place. The interviewees were asked how they would have liked this matching to take place and what the most important parts would be to take into account regarding such a matching. Here are some of the things that were highlighted:

Similar values It does not have to be similar businesses that make an exchange, for example a hotel business with another hotel business, but it is important that the companies share similar values, which for example could be regarding how they want to work with customer service. It does not have to be the same type of company that makes an exchange, but it is more important that they value the same things in terms of working methods for their staff, where a focus on customer satisfaction is highlighted as something very important. The interviewees can also see how it could be rewarding for staff to work in a different organisation or business in order to gain new perspectives that can be useful in their original workplace and that they, besides the new skills they have learned and developed during the swap, they can also come back to their original company with new ideas and possibly even more motivated.

Consider the seasonal trends Something that will be important to take into account when developing a model for exchanging skills between companies is that the hospitality industry in particular has many businesses that are clearly affected by seasonal trends with large differences between the peaking period and off-season. One way to carry out the matching between companies could be to match businesses with opposite cycles. Thus, to match a company that has its peak of the season with a company that at the same time is off-season and vice versa. A concrete example could be to match a winter hotel with a summer hotel instead of matching two business hotels that are going through their busiest period of the year during the same time.

Target audience One way of doing the matching is to pair businesses that sell different types of products or services but that share the same target audience. This could potentially make it easier to demonstrate to the employers the benefits of collaborating with businesses that are not in


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direct competition with their own in regard to what they are selling, while they still share an understanding of the needs of the main target audience/costumer group.

Geographical location The geographical location of a potential skills swap partner can be important from several different perspectives. It may be beneficial to work with an organisation whose geographical location is close to your own for a number of reasons. For example, it should not become a problem for the staff who will be a part of the skills swap to transport themselves to and from the temporary new workplace. If the two collaborating companies are far apart, it may also be a question of arranging accommodation for the employee at the workplace where the skills swap is to take place, in which case it would need to be decided whose responsibility it is to fund and arrange for accommodation. This might be more or less relevant depending on the length of the period when the skills swap will happen. Maybe more so if the period decided for the skills swap is 2-3 weeks, instead of half a day to one full day. In contrast to this, it may be necessary to expand the geographical context further than a local area to find two or more organisations that will be compatible skills swap partners, within whose businesses there could be a proper exchange of skills, perspectives and experiences that is truly rewarding for both parties.

Relationship building Relationship building is pointed out as a crucial aspect for this kind of exchange of skills to take place. Both the creation of a relationship between the companies that are to engage and cooperate with each other to conduct a skills swap, but also most certainly between the Skills Swap Co-ordinator on the one hand and the companies and employers on the other hand. To realise and implement the skills swap concept, the trust building process between employers who does not already have an established relationship will be of great importance to focus on.

2.3.2 The Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions (SE) General attitude to the Skills Swap concept The general attitude to the Skills Swap concept is very positive throughout the conducted consultations and it is really evident that we all have something to learn from each other. The flexibility of allowing employers to decide how long the swap should last is highlighted as important. It will also be of importance that there is a clear objective for the swap and that the profits of ‘Skills Swapping’ can be demonstrated early in the process or even before employers commit to such an engagement. Where will it lead and how do employers know that it is worth the commitment, resources and time, are some of the main questions that arises during the consultations. It needs to be made clear at whose initiative a skills swap takes place, whether it is at the initiative of employers or for example, the Skills Swap Co-ordinator. Furthermore, something that emerged during the consultations was that it is first and foremost important that the staff who are to part take in a skills swap are themselves willing to do so, that they find it interesting and can see and understand that it can be rewarding for them personally. Even if the employer of a company is willing and can envision the benefits of making such an arrangement, it does not matter if the staff are not willing to leave their current role for a period of time to be in another workplace to acquire new knowledge and skills. In the process of developing the methodology for implementing skills swaps, the project certainly needs to take into account not only the attitude and willingness of employers to part take in this initiative of skills swap, but to anchor it in the willingness of the employees.


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Although this might sound obvious, it is an important point to emphasise and something that is raised during these consultations. In-house training of staff Something that was raised about in-house training is that it is important to offer staff the opportunity to receive in-house training when it is possible, but that it can also be challenging as employers need to ensure that the business is financially viable and that consideration needs to be given to whether it is possible to send staff away for training when they are also needed on site to continue the day-to-day operations. The cost of the training itself, and the cost of covering for staff while they are away, have to be considered by the companies. Memorandum of Understanding Although several interviewees consider that it may be of importance that some form of agreement or Code of Conduct is drawn up between the businesses or employers that are going to implement a skills swap, it does not seem to be important that the purpose of the agreement would act as a guarantee against staff poaching. This is more so a question about the freedom and will of the individual and if the skills swap would result in an employee wanting to change workplace then they must have the possibilities to do so. It is pointed out during the consultations that when an employer is engaging in skills development of their staff there is a ‘risk’ that the employees choose to move on to new opportunities and challenges after they have gotten new perspectives, insights, learned new competences and skills. However, this is just viewed as the natural course of things and the benefits of working with skills development are much greater than the potential losses. What seems to be of importance in relation to the Memorandum of Understanding is that it clearly provides guidance to all parties involved regarding how the exchange will take place, how the coordination of the arrangement will be managed and administrative issues such as the duration of the exchange as well as information on how to ensure the safety of the staff carrying out the swaps. It is also highlighted that it can be of great importance to have a contact person to whom all parties can turn when questions arise during the period of the skills swap. One of the interviewees mentions that it could be important to evaluate the skills swap afterwards, in order to clearly see what worked well and what could have worked better. This will be of value from a sustainability perspective and can be a tool for the companies and employers to see how the skills swap arrangements can be fruitful in a long-term perspective. Skills Swap partner If it is preferred by the employers to either work in a cluster with other employees or to only work with one other employer is certainly something that can differs a lot depending on the willingness of each individual employer. Some feel that it may be safe to start doing a Skills Swap with just one other employer to see how the arrangement works before extending the collaboration to a larger group of several different employers. However, there seems to be an openness to also work in a cluster when the employers are confident that they can manage this kind of arrangement and know that it works and more clearly can see that it has been beneficial for them and their employees. Timing of the Skills Swap One of the things that emerges from these consultations is the timing of the implementation of these skills swaps. The companies and businesses that are currently in a fairly pressured situation, partly due to the effects of the current pandemic, may need to recover resource-wise before it makes sense to engage in an arrangement like this. At the moment, many businesses in the industry are in the middle of their recovery process and all their efforts are


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going into getting the business back on its feet. For a skills swap to be implemented, it must be made sure that part taking in such an arrangement will not be burden the daily activities of a company. The rewards and benefits for all parties involved must be very clear, even in a short-term perspective, for employers and company representatives to have the courage, strength and willingness to engage in a collaboration regardless of the extent to which it takes place. The administrative aspect of arranging a skills swap between businesses is something that is raised as a concern and possible barrier for employers. Even if an employer has the willingness and desire to collaborate with others in the way proposed based on the skills swap model, there is some concern that it could result in an administrative burden for the companies. Questions such as whether HR departments will be burdened arise during the consultations. Some smaller businesses may have an HR department consisting of one or two people who may also have other responsibilities in the business. Before the companies can decide to collaborate with others in this way it needs to be ensured that businesses are not burdened by this kind of arrangement, especially given that many businesses in the hospitality industry are struggling more than ever to counter the negative effects of the ongoing pandemic. It is also clear from the consultations that the initiator of this kind of skills development arrangement needs to establish credibility with those who will be taking part in the swaps, which can be a particular challenge when targeting SMEs that are already, or often, struggling with time constraints, which is even more evident in the times in which we currently find ourselves. This is something that the partnership of this project needs to consider when approaching SMEs with the Skills Swap concept, perhaps in a different way than if the same model of skills swaps were to be initiated by one self-employed person to another. In that case, one of the arguments would be that the self-employed person can initiate such a thing because you have first-hand experience of exactly what it means to run a business in this industry and how challenging it can be to take your eyes off your day-to-day business to spend time and resources on skills development. It is therefore not necessarily the willingness to implement this concept that will be the main challenge, but rather a question of time, resources and trust building.

Greece (DIMITRA)

2.3.1 The employer perspective (EL) One of the issues addressed by the employers is that staff training may be expensive and that’s why they always try to find out additional sponsored ways of training. When it comes to small SMEs, training is mostly completed internally. All employers try to encourage the employees to continuous training, especially to skills gap that they consider important. Since there is not a specific education programme, training is in the form of seminars, etc. Only in the case where the enterprise pays for this training, it is possible that the employee will follow the training. This is the case for small enterprises. When it comes to big hotel chains (hotel clubs), the employers provide seminars in a regular basis. It is referred that some seminars are provided by SETE (the Greek Tourism Confederation). Another characteristic of these big clubs is that they exchange employees for some time, in order to refresh their staff and the skills. This practice now does not function due to COVID-19 constraints. Another big issue that is stated is that in Greek hospitality employees, there is no culture of education. There is no motive for further education but mostly the employees do not easily


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look out for a seminar and fill their skills gap by themselves and don’t ‘waste their time’ in further training. Previously, there have been some sponsored seminars in organizations from the Municipality in customer service in the hospitality sector and many employers prompted their employees to attend. In small and medium hospitality enterprises the practice is that they usually give the employees directions. As a hotel manager in a big hotel club (Domotel Greece), Dimitris Tsoutsoulakis discussed the creation of a working group and the development of the ‘Domotel Academy’, aiming at staff training. It was noted that the trainees lacked educational culture and experienced denial in training, coming out from previous educational patterns. Same hotel club had a similar skills swap practice, where there was a transfer of an employee to another hotel in the same club. Except for the training in skills, the employee was accommodated in the hotel and served as a client, in order to have an internal evaluation and the client’s perspective. This practice had a really positive impact. The procedure was the following: In the same hotel club, hotels that had a lowered tourism activity compared to others borrowed an employee, usually for a week. The hotel covered the transportation costs and their accommodation was covered by the hotel based on room availability. In reference to the size of the businesses, it is suggested that the safest choice is to exchange employees among same size businesses. Although, employees from smallest businesses may acquire skills in need from big hotel chains, as the latest have a more organizational plan in management, HR, service sector, etc. The opposite (transfer from a big hotel chain to smaller businesses) is not considered by the interviewees that will function as wished. The employers mentioned that it is necessary that a possible Skills Swap practice will provide a written agreement that the employee will return to the original employer after the training. More specifically, it is suggested that the employee will be engaged to be staff of the business for a specific period, while the employer provides this kind of training, by ‘lending’ him to competitive businesses. It is concluded that SMEs have in mind same type businesses in terms of dynamics (room capacity, personnel number, etc.) in order to cooperate in the Skills Swap project. The skills that should be covered are basic (cleaning, service section, directions on COVID-19) and it is suggested that small and family hospitality businesses should acquire knowledge on typical skills. For big hotel chains, it is suggested to operate the exchange among other hotel chains and specially to acquire knowledge on the functional patterns that each business follows. Skills gap All employers identified the main skill gap, which was the provision of quality customer service and customer experience. This was also a big issue to overcome in hospitality enterprises according to Niki Zouzoula, who has been the President of Tourist Committee in Southern Pelion during the previous years. It is important to remind that the majority of hospitality units in Pelion is SMEs and not big hotel chains. Hotel managers stress out that there is no experience and education on customer approach and confront the client in an opportunistic way. It is characteristic that the respondents state that ‘there is no duration and quality in customer service and customer experience’ in order to have steady tourism inflow and high rates in tourism platforms as well. One of the main skills gaps that is stated is the absence in tourism education/culture. This occurs because the selection of hotel staff is not done according to criteria such as what skills should the employees have in order to provide service. That’s why managers look at some other soft skills where they focus in order to complete an interesting employee profile, such


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as character skills, communication skills, digital skills, negotiation skills, leadership skills and build the staff team in order to ‘sell’ the hospitality product. Another basic skill gap is the absence of technical skills, as the relevant jobs function mostly by experience, without functional patterns, without supervisors and without a framework in how to manage mostly the service in a hotel. The absence of management in specific fields lead to non-professional practices and adoption of everyday skills at work. This is one of the basic gap skills that are found in almost all hospitality enterprises in the region. Big hotel chains can provide skills mostly in the reception and the customer service experience, especially in the meaning of philoxenia. This is one of the most superior skill they recognise.

2.3.2 The Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions (EL) Interviewees showed a great interest and were really positive in being included in the Skills Swap project. Not only did companies’ owners/managers show interest but people from central organisations that deal with tourism and hospitality businesses identified the significance of continuous training and the benefits from a skills swap practice. All companies had in mind specific companies that they would prefer to cooperate with. From the interviews, it is concluded that SMEs have in mind same type businesses in terms of dynamics (room capacity, personnel number, etc.) in order to test the Skills Swap idea. The skills that they would need to cover are in the basis of the service section and a significant part would be the new directions and practices that should be applied regarding COVID-19 measures. In general, it is suggested that small and family hospitality companies should acquire knowledge on typical skills. For big hotel chains, it is suggested to operate the Skills Swap idea among other hotel chains and specially to acquire knowledge on the functional patterns that each hotel follows. The differentiation comes from the difference in the scale of services each hospitality business provides, along with the tourism target group they attract. The interviewees believe that the application of the Skills Swap project will encounter many difficulties. It is stressed out that the employees’ exchange will differ among SMEs and among big hotel chains. The main problem in SMEs is that they are characterized by secrecy, and they may not be positive in revealing to other enterprises their ‘good or bad’ practices they apply in their businesses. Another main problem is that there should have some directions in to who will decide which employees are exchanged among the businesses and to which businesses (size, services). They suggest that a very specific and attentive planning should be made for the project idea to work efficiently. All employers agree that the best period to apply the Skills Swap project is off-season. More specifically: from 5th of September to 15th of June for seasonal tourism businesses and October/November or February/March for city hotels/all-season accommodation. These are time periods when the business is not so stressed in terms of tourism traffic and the employers have the time and willingness to transfer knowledge and skills. On the contrary, it is questioned whether it could be better for the project to work during high-season periods, since the employees will see and learn more.

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) In this section we include the compilation of the answers given by the interviewed companies to the questionnaire agreed by all the partners. The aim was to find out both the needs of


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their employees in terms of skills and their vision of the project and the best way to implement it. In this respect, and as we already mentioned in the introduction, in order to have a complete vision of the hospitality sector as a whole, Sextaplanta addressed the accommodation subsector, and the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce focused on the restaurant and catering subsector.

2.3.1 The employer perspective (ES) Accommodation sub-sector inputs (Sextaplanta) Managers generally agree that the main problem they face in relation to staff skills is the difficulty in finding qualified staff, as well as the unwillingness of permanent staff to accept changes. One of the managers interviewed, who manages tourist flats, points out that young people lack problem-solving skills, while those with a longer professional career have a lack of technological skills. On the other hand, some of the interviewees highlight the difficulty of retaining staff, due to the temporary nature of this sub-sector or the limited possibility of promotion within companies of this type. Only one of the managers interviewed has never had any trainees in his business. The rest of the managers recognise that the experience of hosting trainees has generally been a positive experience for both the trainee and the company. However, they point out that there are clearly two types of professional profiles: on the one hand, those who only do the internship to get through the process, they may end up being a burden for the team and, on the other hand, trainees who are interested in working and developing their career and professional profile. It should be noted that most of the interns have been hotel school students, but some have also taken on students from university centres through the ICARO and ERASMUS+ programmes. In relation to the lack of existing skills in the work teams of the employers surveyed, it should be noted that only one manager of one of the 3-star hotels states that his team has no skills shortages. The rest of the interviewees have a more mixed opinion. In general, they believe that the lack of skills is a matter of individual employees and that it is a team problem. Some agree that it would be beneficial for employees to have basic or advanced knowledge of marketing and sales to enhance the direct sales of the services offered by their hotels. In this sense, it is worth noting that one of the interviewees would find it interesting to acquire skills that are currently outsourced to external companies, such as a revenue management service and/or social media management. All accommodation sub-sector participants in this report agree that they would like to improve the skills of their employees at different technical levels (restaurant, reception, supervision and management). Only the lowest category establishment acknowledges that the most important thing would be to improve skills at the reception level, as this is the first contact with the customer. Some of the interviewees see in-house training of workers as extremely difficult because courses for professionals are expensive and affordable only for large hotel chains. Some have participated in government-subsidised training courses. However, for the majority, training is peer-to-peer. Of those surveyed, only one employer offers online training to its employees. More than half of the companies interviewed, when asked about rotations, stated that they had never tried a rotation system as such in their workplace. When asked about the reasons for this, they mainly answered that it is because they did not see the need for it, because everything flowed naturally within their routine, or because having a very strict timetable prevented them from rotating between different jobs.


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Now, after almost a year of experiencing the severe consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the accommodation sector, everyone agrees that having a rotation system among workers would be the most effective way to get more efficiency out of all contracted resources. In addition, this would facilitate the organisation of holidays and days off, as all workers would be able to replace each other. On the other hand, there are three companies interviewed that do claim to have implemented this rotation system due to the fact that, as they are small companies, all workers should know each other's role and exchange functions when necessary. Finally, we would like to highlight that the hotel with the largest number of employees acknowledges that a few years ago it tried to implement a rotation system and the interviewee points out that it was a very negative experience as it generated chaos in the company. He points out that this may have been due to the very different roles of the different employees. It is for all these reasons that, a priori, we could conclude that this type of rotation system could be more effective and necessary in smaller companies or in companies in which the functions are clearly defined. Everyone would find it interesting to participate in a rotational system with other companies, as by observing different ways of organising themselves, new working dynamics could be acquired for their companies. With regard to what the company could offer, some of the managers pointed to the global vision that an employer of a small and/or family business should have or the possibility of hotels that have a special charm, providing the experience of comfort. In addition, one manager also referred to experience in organising events. Finally, it should be noted that those establishments that also have a restaurant on their premises report that they find it difficult to find qualified personnel for the kitchen as, in addition to being a highly technical position, the personnel seeking employment for this position lack soft skills. Restaurant and catering sub-sector inputs (Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza) From the responses of our interviewees, it is clear that one of the main problems faced by

restaurant owners is the difficulty in finding qualified staff. They also highlight their difficulty

in retaining active and highly qualified talent, which affects the quality of the establishment's

service, and can even minimise the project's capacity for growth and viability, according to

one of the interviewees. However, it is striking that 37.8% of employers recognise that they

have no problems in recruiting and retaining qualified staff, and that they have fairly stable

workforces. One of them also explains that due to the situation caused by COVID-19, the

number of CVs received has increased exponentially, which allows them to choose the most

suitable profile.

As far as staff skills are concerned, practically all the interviewees (only one does not share

this experience) agree on the lack of professionalisation of the sector. The workers, even

though they have received specific training, do not seem to have the necessary skills to

perform their duties and have to acquire them as they develop them on the job. This requires

an additional effort for employers who have to ensure that they are supervised in this learning

process. Interviewees highlight another difficulty faced by this sub-sector: the lack of

professionalism. However, this also highlights one of the dilemmas faced not only by this sub-

sector but also by our education system in particular, and our society in general.


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All the interviewees have internship or work-based learning programmes, we understand

that the aim is to try to overcome, as far as possible, this lack of professionalisation and

professionalism. In this way, they can select the candidates who have responded best to these

programmes or those who have the greatest potential for professional development. All

employers also agree on the usefulness of these learning programmes, both when they are a

success and when they are a failure; Mainly because either way, these training periods allow

them to identify those trainees who are not sufficiently motivated for further professional

development and who are doing the training out of obligation or to receive some kind of

incentive.

One of the interviewees shared with us a success story and told us that, after a training

internship period, they decided to hire a young trainee as a cook. He was very young, had no

experience and the training he had previously received at the cooking school did not exactly

fit the requirements of the restaurant, however he was finally hired because he showed

enough willingness to adapt to the rhythm of a professional kitchen set by the head of the

kitchen.

In short, it seems that we can affirm that, when recruiting, employers value commitment and

attitude more than aptitude, because they assume that they are responsible of training their

staff, as it also allows them to adapt this training to the requirements of each of their

establishments.

Probably also for this reason, when we asked the employers and managers about the

professional skills that are lacking in their teams, except for one of them who only mentions

better technical knowledge both in the kitchen and in the dining room, they all point out soft

skills, such as technical skills.

This list of soft skills is repeated and even extended when they are asked about additional

skills that they would consider particularly useful for their staff to acquire. Thus, they also

mention customer service and people management.

Technological skills (without specifying whether these include the use of Microsoft Office

tools, analysis of social networks and data, research, digital marketing, etc.), the use of new

digital tools, knowledge of the tourism environment and of values increasingly demanded by

customers such as the use of local (zero kilometre) and seasonal products, are other

competences or skills that employers would like their staff to acquire.

And finally, we allude to a competence that our interviewees continue to point to as a missing

competence that is very useful, although fortunately not unanimously, or even in the

majority. This is competence in other languages, specifically English.

It should also be noted that one of the interviewees considers that they have a very complete

team and that the skills they have are already suitable for the jobs they have.

As regards the analysis of the responses obtained regarding the effectiveness and suitability

of in-company training, please read point 2.4 of this report.

2.3.2 The Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions (ES) Accommodation sub-sector inputs (Sextaplanta) All the tourist accommodations that participated in the interview see this proposal as a good learning opportunity for both employees and employers to participate in this type of programme.


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In this respect, there is a clear difference between smaller and/or lower category hotels compared to four-star hotels and flats, in the sense that the former would be more reluctant to participate in a possible pilot project. This may be due to the fact that, as they have a smaller staff, they believe that doing without one of their employees for a period of time (even a short one) would be more detrimental to their daily work (despite the benefit it could bring in the future with the skills learned). In this sense, we find interesting the contribution of one of the participants who suggests that the exchange should not be simultaneous. Some of them would clearly be interested in participating in a pilot programme and would even have in mind what kind of staff they could send to another participating venue (kitchen team) and what kind of staff they could receive in their establishment (reception team). In terms of what skills to offer, the interviewees highlight multidisciplinary work, customer service or event organisation. One of the managers who participated in the interviews points to a specific employee profile for the exchange, which should be an open-minded and proactive person who brings new ways of working to the new company. Despite the fact that, a priori, all the interviewees recognise that the idea of Skills Swap is a very interesting idea, they have pointed out different barriers to the possible implementation of the programme:

Economic barriers: from the economic perspective, different questions arise in the interviews, such as: who would pay the salary of the employee participating in the programme?; would there be any type of subsidy to equalise salaries according to the city of destination?; who would cover the food and travel expenses of the participating employee?

Legal barriers: Some of the interviewees pointed out that, when it comes to framing an initiative such as this within the labour legislation, there is little flexibility. If the exchange were to take place at the national level in Spain, it would be within the same legislation in terms of social security registration or employment contracts. Many of the interviewees questioned how this could be done at international level: would the employee be covered abroad if he/she had an accident at work? Some pointed out that in this type of difficulty the ERASMUS+ programme, which has been so successful in the educational community, could be used as an example.

Psychological barriers: it could be the case that an establishment would like to participate in the exchange programme but that, on the other hand, its employees do not want to travel. It should be noted that younger employees would probably be more willing to participate in the programme because they have fewer family responsibilities (no family of their own).

Competitive barriers: avoid the possibility of companies participating in the programme that are very similar to each other and are in direct competition. For example, two hotels in a small town whose target customers are of the same social status. In this case, one of the interviewees believes that if an exchange were to take place between these two hotels, it could be used to obtain confidential information rather than to learn other working methods.

Language barriers: there should be a minimum level required for the exchange to ensure good communication between employee and employer.

Employee barriers: The employee's own involvement and attitude would be a key part of this. A highly motivated person is more likely to get more out of an exchange programme than someone who is being forced to participate. It is also important how to convey the company's involvement in the programme, so that no employee feels


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afraid of replacement. For this reason, some interviewees emphasise that participation by employees should be entirely voluntary.

To ensure a balance between the different companies involved, it is essential that there is an intermediary figure between the different participant employers. This figure would have an institutional role in structuring the swap among employees, if there were to be any kind of contract, or in establishing the parameters and objectives to be met by the receiving company and the employee. In addition, in order to participate in the Skills Swap programme, the interviewees consider it necessary to be able to monitor the objectives to be achieved by both the manager and/or supervisor and the employee. We were impressed by the fact that half of the interviewees were clear about the type of companies they would like to participate in the programme with. For example, a hotel that has a well segmented clientele (most of its international guests come from Germany, Sweden or Switzerland) would like its chef to go to one of these countries to learn typical local dishes and make its guests feel at home. In this same aspect, it is also striking that three of the companies interviewed mentioned companies in the sector, but not hotels. In other words, it would be interesting to extend this programme not only to the subsectors analysed in this report, hotels and/or restaurants, but also to companies of the tourism sector such as online travel agencies, revenue management companies or digital marketing companies. In this way, they believe that, in the future, services that are currently outsourced could be carried out by the company itself. One of the managers also stresses the key role of the employee responsible for the maintenance of the hotel. This employee could acquire other skills if instead of going to another hotel, he/she went to a department store or a train station. In this way, the emphasis is not so much on the type of establishment, but on sharing the spirit, purpose and commitment to participate in the exchange. In relation to how employee and employer should be matched, most enterprises agree that it should be between hotels of similar or higher category. However, there is still a significant part of the companies interviewed that would not be clear on how this should be done. The duration of the programme varies from days (if it is a local exchange or within the same province) to 3 months if it is an international exchange. The standard average is 15 days to allow sufficient time to adapt to the new work team. As for the ideal season for the exchange, this is where we have found the most disparate answers. The first thing to do would be to identify the peak and low season in each participating area. For example, within Andalucía there are areas where the low season is clearly the winter months while the peak season is the spring-summer months. However, in the inland areas of Andalucía there are snowy areas, so the peak and low seasons would be reversed to the beach areas described above. Some of the interviewees believe that, regardless of the months, it would be better to implement this initiative in the low season in order to be able to properly attend to the worker they host; others point to a medium season so that there would not be too much work where serious mistakes could be made by the exchange person; and others point to a peak season since under pressure is how the skills of all workers can best be enhanced. In order to participate in the programme, they all see the need for a Memorandum of Understanding specifying all the tasks to be carried out by the employee, by the manager and if there were any confidentiality or recruitment agreements. Only one of the interviewees did not see the need for a recruitment clause, as he would see it as logical that an employee


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would want to improve and advance in his or her professional career and for this purpose this type of programme could be very beneficial. Only 2 of the 9 companies surveyed have a close relationship with other companies to exchange workers between them. One of them is due to the fact that the hotel is run by 4 partners who in turn have other companies (external catering, digital marketing, events, etc.) that provide the hotel with clients and workers. A striking case would be the hotel in Pizarra that has shared a worker with another nearby hotel to save costs in terms of social security. In this particular case, the worker was responsible for the maintenance of the hotels, working half a day in each of them. With regard to the code of conduct: Most of the interviewees showed some concern about how this type of programme could be carried out on a bureaucratic, economic and/or social level, the social level being understood as if a company employee felt forced to participate in this type of programme. Some also pointed out a certain fear of recruitment of their employees after the exchange or even of possible unfair competition due to attempts to steal confidential information from each work team. After the interviews, it became clear that it would be useful to have a company that would be in charge of managing the programme, acting as an intermediary between the different employers and taking care of bureaucratic procedures, helping the employee to find accommodation and/or flights if necessary. If any problems arise during the exchange, such a manager could also play a key role in resolving them. The Code of Conduct should cover aspects such as:

1. The exchange must be properly registered in accordance with the labour law of each country. In this way, should an accident occur during the course of the exchange, there can be a guarantee that the employee and employer are covered at all times.

2. The employee's salary: If the swap is local, perhaps the salary should be provided by the regular employer. On the other hand, if it is national and/or international, the employee should have a basic salary provided by the regular employer, and if more money is required, there should be some sort of scholarship or grant from the programme.

3. A monitor of the swap process thanks to the existence of parameters or indicators that reflect whether the employee who has carried out the exchange has fulfilled the expectations of the exchange.

4. Some control on the professional profile of the participating employees so that employers do not send their worst workers to receive temporarily a better one. For this reason, the participants should be workers with the right attitude so that the employer could trust him/her.

5. The memorandum should include some time limitation to prevent ‘poaching’ of employees. Some of the interviewees believe that without such a clause, large companies could easily "poach" workers from small companies. A possible solution would be the limitation of recruiting a worker who has participated in the programme for at least a few months after the exchange has taken place. It should be noted that the manager of a 4-star hotel in Ronda would welcome this possible recruitment of workers and sees it as an incentive for employee participation.

Restaurant and catering sub-sector inputs (Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza):


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Bearing in mind the difficult situation that the restaurant and catering subsector is going through, with continuous changes in the regulations governing the restrictions that limit their closing hours, capacity and the conditions under which they can carry out their activity, it is almost surprising, at least in Aragon, that the owners and managers interviewed were not only able and willing to evaluate our proposal, but that practically all of them showed, to a greater or lesser extent, interest in our initiative. There was one response that particularly touched us, and which we would like to highlight: "The mere fact of seeing other realities and their solutions is a learning experience for the entire production and management chain. I value very much the emotional component that represents the company's effort for the human and professional development of its workers". In relation to the skills that they could offer to other companies, although not all the respondents answered, we found that those who did so focused both on the functional areas of their own company, such as bartending, cooking and event management, and on other more cross-cutting issues common to any type of company, such as the preparation of price lists and purchasing management, upselling, human resources management, strategy, sustainability, marketing, creation of value propositions and motivation. All in all, according to the feedback received by the managers, we could conclude that the project seems to arouse real interest among professionals in the sector. However, some barriers or impediments have also been identified that could hinder their implementation. In this sense, one of the managers consulted points out, for example, that Zaragoza is not a very large city (just over 700,000 inhabitants) in which most of the professionals in the sector know each other and that, for this reason, care should be taken with respect the existing envy or competition between establishments offering similar services. In this sense, he stressed the importance of reciprocity between the participating companies, that the exchange should take place between workers with similar profiles and levels, and that the training received and given should be balanced. Another manager interviewed, who has his establishment in a sparsely populated rural area of Aragon, points out that the distance to urban centres where potential workers and locals willing to participate in the exchange are located is a handicap for him. Four of the eight companies consulted are also concerned about administrative, legal and even economic aspects (would it be necessary to make any changes to the employment contract?, what would happen to the civil liability insurance?, who would pay the employee who stops working in your establishment?, among others). In this regard, they expect these aspects to be solved by both the project partners and the associations involved. Finally, an employer finds it hard to imagine having to let go of an employee (and his or her skills) for a certain period of time. He argues that having to fill the gap with other employees could be difficult when the employee has very specific functions and skills. Having identified the barriers, we discuss some practical issues that should be taken into account when implementing this initiative. When asked specifically about the characteristics of the establishment with which to carry out this swap experience, it is curious how practically all of them coincide in responding that they would have to be establishments that carry out the same activity, share the same values (one employer alludes, for example, that the establishment would have to share the same social, sustainable and accessible values as they do) and the level of professionalism or category.


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Apparently, no one seems to want to consider learning new services other than what they already do, they all talk about teaching others what they do best or learning to improve or perfect what they already do. When asked whether they would be willing to do these swaps with a group of establishments or would prefer to do it directly with another employer, the majority seemed to be indifferent, as long as they had the same profile. Nevertheless, two of the respondents agreed that it would be more interesting, complete and enriching if the exchange was carried out among a group of establishments. It is also striking that all seem to have in mind some or even a few examples of establishments with which they would like to carry out this exchange, except for one, because he would like to carry out an exchange at European level. When asked about the best season to carry out this initiative (out of season or during a period of greater activity), we find a great variety of answers: 37.5% of respondents vehemently defend that it should be in low season, which in these cases, corresponds to the summer season; 12.5% also argue that it should be in low season but "with occasional exchanges by department in peak season to see how things work"; another 37.5% argue that it should be in mid-high season or intermediate dates; and 12.5% point out that they would prefer to host other employees in peak season and send their employees to other establishments in low season. As for the duration of the swaps, the answers are varied. 62.5% of the respondents favour a period ranging from one week to one month. The most extreme responses are between those employers who consider that, at most, two days a week, and those who speak of between 3 and 6 months and up to 1 year. As regards the issues that need to be agreed and signed before taking part of this initiative, all agree that the legal issues should be settled before any kind of swap between staff in order to avoid any incidence with the labour authorities. However, no one seems to know for sure which aspects need to be regularised because these aspects are taken care of by the management companies with which they work. Nevertheless, some of the issues they point out are: the signing of an agreement between the parties involved specifying the rights and obligations of each of them; the formalisation of an internship or skills exchange contract; the signing of a confidentiality contract; the taking out of additional employment insurance or civil liability insurance to cover any type of eventuality. The possible "theft" of staff does not seem to be an issue of concern to most of our interviewees. Finally, one respondent added that in addition to this regularisation, it would be desirable for companies to have some kind of financial support for these processes and their participants, as well as accommodation. As regards the development of a Memorandum or code of conduct that the project partners are expected to develop to regulate the issues of "matching" between employees and employers, all agree that it would be desirable and necessary, but it could be deduced from their answers that it would have to be adapted to each specific case. Finally, and once all the specific questions had been answered, respondents were asked for suggestions or proposals for improvement to our initiative. We present below the contributions of some of the respondents: - Now is not a good moment to develop this type of experience given the situation we are

facing. It would have little acceptance.


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- The project could start by training company managers to build their confidence and empowerment. The learning process should be continuous for the company's managers, so that it is more sustainable over time.

- The size of the companies should be taken into account. This project might not be feasible for small companies.

Cyprus (EDITC) We carried out six consultations (interviews) with general managers or department managers (interviewees) from the hospitality sector. The consultations were carried out either through a ZOOM or SKYPE meeting or by phone. In the different sections below, we summarize our results.

2.3.1 The employer perspective (CY) According to the interviewees one major problem the employers face in regard with the skill set of their staff is that employees do not have adequate communication skills. This is possibly due to their education level. As they interviewees mentioned they often have employees with low education level therefore they do not have training on communication skills. As 4 of the employees pointed out this become even worse when they have employees from other European or third countries. These employees who are usually from Eastern European Countries (Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania) and the 3rd countries (Syria, Nigeria, Philippines) have very different culture therefore is very difficult to communicate with the other employees of the hotel and the customers of the hotel. In addition, these employees do not know the Greek language and they have basic knowledge of the English language therefore their communication with the other employees and the customers is difficult. Another problem the employer face in regard with the skill set of their staff is the lack ICT Skills. As some interviewees pointed out most often the employees lack ICT Skills. In most hotel departments, the staff must be able to use computers and IT equipment. For example at the reception, the receptionist must know how to use the hotel’s reservation system, the billing system and the receipt system. In order to be able to use this system you must have at least the basic computer skills. In the hotel’s restaurant, you must also have ICT Skills. The waiter must know how to use the reservation system, how to use the billing system. Therefore, again the waiter must have basic computer skills. As some interviewees said this lack of ICT Skills may be due to the education level of the employees as well as to the fact that they employ staff from other European or third countries are unskilled therefore they have no ICT Skills. Another problem the employers face in regard with the skill set of their staff is that the staff does not have the skill to follow procedures. For example, at the reception of the hotel, the receptionist or assistant receptionist must follow a certain procedure during the checking in and checking customers. Although there is a written procedure the staff fail to follow it because they think that is a waste of time to follow all the steps of the procedure since as they employees say, “we can do this work quicker by using our own way”. This however often leads to mistakes. These mistakes would be avoided if the staff followed the written procedure. Another problem the employers face in regard with the skill set of their staff is that the staff does not pay attention to detail. In the hospitality sector, you must offer to your customer the highest quality service. In order to do that you must pay attention to detail in your customer service, in all different departments of the hotel.


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Another problem the employers face in regard with the skill set of their staff is that sometimes there is a lack of skills among the staff within the kitchen and the bar. The bar and restaurant services of a hotel are highly valued by the customers. Therefore, the employees must have the skills to offer the best possible product (food and beverages) and service to the customer.

Figure 5. Skills gap in the sector- Results from the interviews, Cyprus

The interviewees identify in their hotels the following skills gap:

Lack of communication skills

Lack of ICT Skills

Lack of skills in following procedures

Lack of skill to follow procedure

Lack of skill to pay attention to details

Lack of skills among the staff within the kitchen and the bar. According to the employees’ other skills that are very useful in the hotels are teamwork skills, time management skills and multitask skills. In many jobs within the hotel, staff must work together. For example, the restaurant manager must work together with the waiters in order to ensure that the restaurant’s customers are happy. The chef in the kitchen must cooperate well with the other kitchen personnel to deliver high quality meals. The head receptionist must work well together with the assistant receptionist in order to provide the best service to the customer. Another skill that is useful in the hotels is time management skills. All jobs need to be completed in a timely manner in order for the hotel to run smoothly. For example, when a group of customers arrive at the hotel their room must be ready and cleaned in order not to wait. In the case that their rooms are not ready they customers will make a complain. The receptionist must have ready the room keys before the check-in of the customers and must have the bills ready before the checkout of the customers. Another skill that is useful in the hospitality sector is to be multitasked person. In the hospitality sector the staff must be able to perform at the same time different tasks meaning the staff must be able to do different jobs within a day. This may sound easy but is not.

Attention to detail10% Communicatio

n Skills20%

Language skills10%

IT Skills20%

Skills to follow procedures

10%

Kitchen and bar skills

20%

Paying attention to

detail10%


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According to the interviewees, the employers try to overcome these issues using different means. Firstly, the manager or department manager has weekly meetings with the staff. During these meetings they discuss the issues that arise like miscommunication that exist between the employees and the customer, difficulty in using the computer system and the team manager or department manager try to find solutions to these problem during the meeting. Of course, as all employers admit sometimes the duration of the meetings are very short in order to solve all problems at that time. The manager/ department manager also develops different manuals on how to do each job in order to help the employees to carry their different tasks easier and correctly. These manuals are distributed to the staff In that case the manager / supervisor will organise and deliver internal trainings. The purpose of the internal trainings will be the staff to acquire Basic skills like IT Skills, language skills, communication skills and other.

Figure 6. Levels of training provided – Results from the interviews, Cyprus

However not all staff welcomes the internal training, as one of the employers pointed out, staff from foreign countries are more willing to participate in an internal training than Cypriot employees. This is due to the fact that the foreign staff consider that the internal training will add value to their work and will also earn a certificate through this training. On the other hand, Cypriot staff are reluctant to attend because they do not think that the internal training will add value to their job and they consider that they do not need the training. As one employer said they usually say” There is no point attending this training. I have attended similar training in the past”. Many employees organise and deliver internal trainings, to the question if it is difficult to carry out internal training three of the interviewees said that it is difficult because the staff work in shifts and is very difficult to organise all of them to attend the training and that even if they organise the internal training some of the participants will be very tired to follow the training. The other three interviewees said that it is not difficult to organise internal trainings. They said that these internal training can be very practical and effective. One of the three interviewees pointed out that it is not difficult to organise internal trainings for new coming staff at the beginning of the season. However, if some employees start working in the mid of the high season, then at that time, it will be very difficult to organise and deliver internal training. Another interviewee said that although he organises internal trainings in his hotel, the investment on this training may be wasted since these personnel may not work the following year in his hotel.

100%

0%0%

Basic Skills Supervisory Skills Managerial Skills


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Figure 7. Difficulty in Offering Internal Trainings in Hotels – Results from the interviews, Cyprus

All interviewees think that there must be a continuous professional development of the staff. This professional development can be achieved through participation in internal trainings and workshops. As they point out learning is a lifelong procedure and you must always try to keep for staff motivated to learn new things and follow up all developments. Two interviewees said that they have used Skills Swapping the one within their hotel. However, no one of the interviewees said that they have used Skills Swapping with other hotels. Only three of the interviewees had apprenticeships at their hotel. As they said, young people came to the hotel for some months in order to gain work experience during their studies. During the apprenticeship these young people gained many practical skills that would be useful in their upcoming career. Also, as they said, ‘an apprenticeship can help you see the actual work done inside a hotel’. One of these three interviewees said that at his hotel they have apprenticeships of Cypriot students and foreign students every year. However not all three interviewees considered the apprenticeships successful. As one interviewee commented some young people came and stayed for few weeks other came and stayed during their whole apprenticeship period.

Figure 8. Apprenticeships in hotels – Results from the interviews, Cyprus

2.3.2 The Skills Swap concept barriers and solutions (CY) At the beginning of the consultations, we explained the aim of the Skills Swap Project to the interviewees. We pointed out that The Skills Swap project aim is to upgrade the efficacy and relevance of contemporary VET in the hospitality sector by designing and integrating into sector-based VET provision an innovative 'skills swap' approach to employer-facilitated learning design in work-based learning for employees and apprentices. ‘Skills Swap' initiatives focus on skills sharing within the sector for the mutual benefit of companies, VET participants

Yes50%

No50%

Yes50%

No50% Yes

No


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and employees. The interviewer also gave some examples of Skills Swapping to help the interviewees gain a clearer picture of the Skill Swap idea and to intrigue them. All interviewees said that there are some barriers in organising the Skills Swap activity. Firstly, the employers said that one barrier to this Skills Swap Activity will be the risk to the health and Safety of the employee. Each hotel has its own Health and Safety Rules and Procedures that they have to follow and the hotel is liable for the health and safety of its staff. Therefore, one major question is who will be responsible for the health and Safety of this staff during their working placement in the other hotel? They have to look into this and the interviewee said they have to consult the hotel’s health and safety officer. A second barrier in organising the Skills Swap activity will be the accountability of the employee. The employee that participates in the Skills Swap Activity will have to report to a manager about his progress in this activity and perhaps the problems he faces or his complains. To which manager he will report? To the manager of the sending hotel or to the manager of the receiving hotel? A third barrier in the organisation of the Skills Swap Activity may be the threat of “poaching”. The interviewees believe that this Skills Swap activity may lead to attracting and stealing the staff of the sending hotel from the receiving hotel. As the interviewees pointed when you send an employee in another hotel in order to gain some skills, this employee has already had some skills. If these skills are recognised by the receiving hotel and are valuable to the receiving organisation then the receiving organisation may try to steal your employee. Of course, this does not mean that the receiving organisation will succeed in stealing your employee but this is a possible scenario. As one interviewee said there is immense competition in the hospitality sector. There is a shortage of skilled employees. Therefore, according to the Cyprus culture “when you find a good skilled employee you have to grab him”. A fourth barrier in organising a Skills Swap Activity may be that according to the Cyprus law, every employer has an obligation to insure against his legal liability for accident or occupational disease for every person in his employment. This is called the Employer’s Liability Insurance. However, this insurance is valid within the working place of the Employer. Therefore, before the employee participate in a Skill Swap activity the manager from the sending organisation must find out whether this insurance can cover the employee in the receiving organisation’s premises. If this insurance does not cover the employee, then the receiving organisation must insure the employee for the time he will be in his premises. A fifth barrier in organising the Skills Swap activity may be the payment of the employee during the time he is in the receiving organisation. The interviewees wondered who will pay the employee’s salary and social insurance contributions during that time. The sending organisation or the receiving organisation? As they say this is very important to know. Four out of six interviewees thought that all these are barriers in organising the Skill Swap activity and two of the six said that the major barrier is the threat of “poaching” Therefore we asked the interviewees to rank this barrier in order of “size” from the biggest barrier to the smaller barrier. The results are shown in the diagram below:


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Figure 9. Barriers to organising Skills Swap – Results from the interviews, Cyprus

When we asked them whether they thing a Memorandum of Understanding that was compiled along with guidance on how to manage each of these concerns by the Skills Swap Co-ordinator, would help their hotel, four of the six interviewees replied positively saying that a Memorandum of Understanding prepared by the Skill Swap Co-ordinator and signed by both parties or even an official written Agreement between the Sending and the Receiving Organisation signed by both parties may eliminate their concerns and most of the barriers mentioned above. One of the six interviewees said that the Memorandum of Understanding would not help because this Skills Swap idea is very difficult to work in Cyprus due to different culture. Another two of the six interviewees said it may help and he added that the main barrier to organising the Skills Swap would be that no one from the staff would want to get involved in a Skills Swap activity. He also added that the staff have certain working rights and he has to take into account these rights.

Figure 10. Helpfulness of the Memorandum of Understanding – Results from the Interviews, Cyprus

Regarding the matching of the employers two of the interviewees said that the criterion to be used for the matching of the employers should be there the hotel’s star rating. Therefore, the sending and receiving hotel should of equal star rating. The other four of the interviewees did not answer to this question. Regarding the matching of employees with the work position in the receiving organisation, the interviewees responded that they must first carry out a skill analysis of the employee and recognise the skills gap he/she has. Then the employee will be matched to a work position that will help him /her fill up these gaps. For example, if we have a waiter in the hotel

Health and safety issues

25%

Accountability

15%

Poaching30%

Insurance10%

Whos is paying

during the

SW activity

20%

Yes Maybe No


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restaurant that is excellent in serving the food dishes but has no skills in preparing coffees or drinks then through Skills Swap, we can assign the employee to a barista position to acquire these skills. On the question how the sending and receiving hotel will benefit from the Skills Swap activity two of the six interviewees said that both the sending organisation and the receiving organisation can benefit from it. On the one hand the employees of the sending organisation will gain new skills and experiences from the receiving organisation, will develop themselves and they will bring these new skills back in their own organisation. This will make the employees more motivated and productive in their work and this in turn will be a benefit to their organisation. On the other hand, the receiving organisation will see how staff from other hotels work. Also, as one interviewee said, the receiving organisation will want to show the new employee that the receiving organisation(hotel) is very well organised and is performing well. This will keep the receiving organisation very “active”. The employer will do his best to transfer new skills and attitudes to the employee placed in his organisation. The other four interviewees they did not answer this question. Four of the six interviewees said that they do not have close working relationships with any other hotels of either the same or different size. One of the six interviewees said that this hotel has closed working relationships only with the hotels within their hotel group and one of the six interviewees said that his hotel has close working relationships with other hotels. Regarding the best period that the Skills Swap activity would work better all interviewees said that this would be during off season periods because during these periods they will have more time to pay attention to the employees involved. Also, as one interviewee commented during off season periods the employee will be easier to adjust in the new hotel’s environment and there will be more “space “for mistakes. On the question “How long would you allow your employees to be with another company and how long would you host an employee and giving different possible durations like half a day, a day, 3 days, a week, two weeks, three weeks, all interviewees said that half day, one day and three days would be too short. They said that one week would be fine. When the interviewees were asked whether they think this idea would work in Cyprus thee of the six participants said that this idea would not work in Cyprus. One of the interviewees said that this idea is too strange to him. In the hospitality sector neither the employer wants his employee to acquire new skills in another field nor the employee wants to acquire new skills in another field and go to in another hotel in order to acquire new skills. As he said his hotel would not accept staff from lower star hotel for the Skill Swap Activity. He suggested that the employees should stay at their own positions and they should not change positions. Also, he suggested that if these Skills Swap Activities take place, these should be between same star hotels. Another interviewee said that it would be very difficult this Skills Swap idea to work in Cyprus There is fear that the other organisation (hotel) will steal your staff. As he commented the Skills Swap must be promoted very well in order to work. The third interviewee said that this Skills Swap idea is difficult to work in Cyprus. This is because there is a big shortage of staff. The skilled Cypriots employees are not many and they do not want to work in the hospitality sector anymore. They are educated they look for easier jobs. Therefore, if a hotel gets involved in a Skills Swap activity the department manager must spend time with the new employee-trainee in order to train him. This will mean that instead of doing his one job he will be spending time training the new employee. Unfortunately, he does not have the time.


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The other three interviewees said that this Skills Swap idea may work in Cyprus. They said that it could take place for a short period of time. They also said that the Skills Swap activity could take place for the training of few employees that need urgently to acquire extra skills. They also commented that the Skills Swap activities could develop channels of communication between the hotels and this would be the start of building relationships. One of the interviewees suggested that a Code of Conduct for the Skills Swap activity could be developed. One interviewee suggested that one point that need to go in the Code of Conduct is that the employees should have positive, ethical behaviour and that in the case the receiving organisation is not ethical towards the employees then the employees should report to the sending organisation and the Skills Swap Coordinator.

2.4 Current skills training The purpose of this section is to describe how companies arrange presently for their employees to get different types of experience of different tasks or environments. A short description of the companies involved in the interviews is presented along with the way they arrange their current skills training.

United Kingdom (RINOVA) 1. Name of company: Out Sourced, Contact details: Seb Ryder Chef and HR hospitality

consultant-email: [email protected] Description of company Sebastian is a professional and respected chef with many years’ experience in the hospitality sector. As well as being a head chef in many quality hotels and restaurants, Sebastian is a trainer and also offers his services as a consultant to other hospitality employers, not only as a chef but also within recruitment process of new staff and their training. Seb feels that there needs to be stronger link between employers, hospitality training providers, schools and colleges to ensure that the type of training being offered is relevant to the sector. Training needs to instil a sense of professionalism and discipline – the industry needs to improve itself and instil a sense of pride if it is to be considered a viable career option for young people. Sebastian is able to offer in-house training in customer awareness, problem solving, upselling customer recognition – this is where if someone recognises a previous customer, they acknowledge this and make sure they share information – makes a customer feel welcome and helps if there are any problems. 2. Name of company: Wellesley, Langley Hotel and 10 Manchester street (part of the

Marriot group of hotels), Contact details: [email protected] Description of company: Wellesley Hotel This Hotel group has several sites in UK and worldwide – differing in size and number of guests accommodated for, most are for leisure purposes, they offer food and dining, accommodation and concierge services. Muriel, our representative at the interview, carries out all general HR duties; including payroll, training and recruitment and prior to the pandemic she had 2.5 assistants but is now down to


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just one. She has worked in this role since 2002. She is originally from France and studied an apprenticeship, did stints at Club med, Marseille Airport and for her final year of her diploma she did hotel management. She decided to come to the UK to see what was on offer and progress her hospitality career. Staff training Staff training at the hotel they are a small company, offer 1 month induction programme in the basics like health and safety, fire safety, and manual handling which are all compulsory. Staff also complete a 2-week rotation in all departments for new and existing staff, this is arranged through heads of Department. Muriel has also been involved in skills swaps with staff from a hotel in Italy see above. She is also keen on taking on apprentices but she will need the support of her head of departments who have reservations. Muriel tries to offer staff 4-5 training opportunities a year some of the most popular ones are: Business writing skills good for improving English but also those with ESOL, helps staff write better business communication – emails etc. E.g. Had receptionist who was almost over polite in her emails, differences between UK and France Cultural Awareness assists staff coming from different backgrounds to understand different expectations of different guests and their cultures, etiquette, colours, customs body language etc. This a popular course with staff and used to be delivered by external trainer but now Muriel delivers this. Muriel collects and collates staff feedback about the training in terms of impact and usefulness – this allows them to justify any costs of training. 3. Name of company: The Athenaeum Hotel, Contact details: Joanne Taylor-Stagg General

Manager, email: [email protected] Description of the company The Hotel is situated in Mayfair central London and has two sister hotels; The Grove a luxury 5 star accommodation, The Runnymede on Thames is just minutes from Heathrow and Royal Windsor and Green garden House which is now long stay apartments Current training All new staff have an induction and due to the lockdown and most staff being furloughed they are going to be running refresher inductions for all existing staff to introduce them to the workplace after 14 months of being closed. There are many new post-COVID measures to be put in place like one-way-systems etc. that staff will need to become familiar with to navigate the hotel. E.g. Employee Safety Initiatives

Thermal imaging temperature checks upon arrival and careful monitoring for other symptoms

Specific training on COVID-19 and on the modifications made to our procedures to reduce the risk of transfer

Uniform adaptations to incorporate Personal Protective Equipment

Installation of protective screens in front of house areas for peace of mind Staff joining will undergo mandatory training in Health and safety, manual handling and food safety, specific course for those in the kitchen e.g. food allergens. Training is delivered through a mix of in house and external providers, some is delivered through specialist suppliers e.g. Food and Beverage.


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During the lockdown they have been running a daily 3pm session for all staff on different subjects to keep them engaged and also to learn new skills – this has been very successful. Food and beverage have also done some onsite training on different topics by way of re-introducing staff to the workplace again – this has been really useful. Front of house are also doing the same thing. 4. Name of company: Rise, Contact details: [email protected], Jonathan De Beer MD Description of the company Never Ever Ltd/ Rise are a hospitality innovation incubator basically they host space for large corporate members to have conferences and seminars but also space for start-up/scale up business businesses in financial technology. They pay fees to use the hosting space. They currently have offices in London, Mumbai and New York and have 35 members of staff, only 6 of those in London. The have been operating for 9 years. Website: https://rise.barclays/ Current Training Rise do not do any training outside the company, all of their training is devised and delivered in house. The main focus for their training is in house ‘State of Mind training’ a way to look at the world and how you can create your own reality. For Rise the emphasis is on developing the right approach rather than a specific set of tangible skills. However, they do offer their staff the opportunity to travel to other offices in other countries when a new office is setting up and they also do an annual trip which again they see very much as part of their staff development. In this way Rise actually invest significantly in the development of their teams and individual staff members. 5. Name of company: City of London Club https://www.cityoflondonclub.com/ https://www.cityoflondonclub.com/about-the-club/history-tradition Contact details: Edward Plunkett, email: [email protected] Description of the company Situated in the centre of the city in old Broad street, The club was established in 1832, in 1834 the building was purpose built for them, it was originally just a restaurant and bar offering a lunch club from 9-5pm but since then it has started offering breakfast and dinner and more recently has upgraded to offer accommodation with bedrooms. They also plan to start catering for weddings and other events. It is a member’s only club and the membership of 1000 are mainly City Directors and CEOS, new members have to be sponsored by existing members – they therefore have a very specific clientele with a very specific expectation. Current training Training is a mix of inhouse and external. It was mentioned that the restaurant manager has worked there 29 years so is rather stuck in his ways and displays resistance to anything not in his not in his job description. Training at present is quite traditional and covers things like food hygiene and handling, working from heights. 6. Name of company: Be-Enriched Charity, https://www.be-enriched.org/about-us, Contact

details: Kemi Akinola, email: [email protected] Description of the company

mailto:[email protected]

https://www.be-enriched.org/about-us


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Be enriched are a charitable organisation that offer 6mths informal training in hospitality and kitchen skills to young people with LDD/SEND, they work with special schools and also work with young people considered to be at risk of offending or ending up in the criminal justice system. They take on 3 young people at a time and have 9 paid staff and around 6 volunteers every day. Be Enriched was formed in September 2013 by a group of youth workers, arts professionals and young people to provide young people the opportunity to develop skills and improve community cohesion through training and volunteering opportunities. The Canteens Project was started as a short-term project in 2013 to provide young offenders with an alternative community service opportunity. ‘After a month we could clearly see that there was an ongoing need for food and friendship in the community. We had 40 regulars and were utilising a huge amount of surplus food each week. So we kept the project going’. Now it's been expanded to four canteens in South London serving over 3,880 meals with over 650 volunteers per year alongside other projects and food system improvement work. Current training All staff working for the charity have a background in hospitality, they train young people with SEN/LDD to have the basics in kitchen skills. They also do basic skills training and food hygiene and preparation, reading instructions and measuring, once the YP complete the training they go on to other training, SEND provisions or get a job. Much of the training of paid staff is done through Local authorities like Wandsworth, Lambeth and is focused on teaching them about working with YP with disabilities such as autism or Asperger’s. 7. Name of company: Rushbridge Hair Design, Contact details: Andy and Sheryl Rushbridge,

email: [email protected] Description of the company This employer is a Hair salon run from home by husband and wife team, who have been in the same business for 30 years. The reason they have been included in the research is to emphasise that hospitality is not just about food preparation and accommodation. For many years they operated as a sub-sector of the hospitality sector, running their salon as an integral part of the Thistle Hotel in the centre of Brighton – they therefore represent the many businesses that form part of the broader hospitality industry. Starting with a large salon in Brighton and then with a salon based in a Hotel with a team of about 7/8 staff, 8 years ago they decided to revaluate and downsize the business and run it from home so now they are the only staff. Current Training They are very skilled in Customer service communication skills. The ability to listen is paramount in any customer facing business. Building rapport is a key skill and ensuring customer satisfaction, interacting with different age customers who have different expectations of how they want to be treated. Currently some of their training comes via suppliers of products and due to COVID most is now done remotely, in a very ‘hands on’ profession this is no substitute for face-to-face experience.


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Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) One of the interviewees, who is the General Manager of a hotel that is a franchisee of one of the largest hotel chains in the Nordic countries (Nordic Choice Hotels), describes that it can sometimes feel like there are so many different training courses for employees that it becomes difficult to keep up with the daily work. The experience described has to do with the fact that the company has to make ends meet in the first place, before they can send their staff away for training, since the staff is needed on site for the day-to-day business to be able to continue. The hotel chain referred to above offers many different internal trainings. However, in the hotel group of which this hotel is a part (Winn Hotel Group), has created its own business academy called Winn Business School where they have an annual training programme. In this training programme, employees receive training in areas ranging from sales, internal systems, safety and labour law, depending on which department they work in. Another interviewee who also has long experience in the hotel industry, describes that there is some training available for those in managerial positions but that there is a lack of what is offered to the rest of the employees. They would have appreciated everyone to be able to attend more training courses and get more professional training, at least once or twice a year for half- or full day, especially in areas such as service skills, sales, customer relations or learning more about the company they work in and organisational aspect of the business. This could contribute to the employees getting a deeper understanding of the big picture that they are a part of when working for a company, which can help them do a better job and increase their motivation. The interviewee also describes that in the years of working in the hotel business, she has experienced that for short periods of time during a year, the employees were allowed to test working in other departments. After a year, they may be given the opportunity to try yet another new department. However, after this short period of trying out a new working environment with new tasks, employees have returned to their original department. Visita, which is the trade association and employers' organisation for the Swedish hospitality industry and represents over 8,000 workplaces that together account for most of the hospitality industry's total turnover, also offers a range of training courses and mentoring programmes for which their members can apply.2

Greece (DIMITRA) The current skills training is provided in the enterprises interviewed at different levels. In big hotel chains staff training is conducted through internal training, and in particular interviewed and inside the region the instituted ‘Domotel Academy’. Same hotel club, had a similar skills swap practice, where they swapped an employee to another hotel of the same club. Except for the training in skills, the employee was accommodated in the hotel and was served as a client, in order to give an internal evaluation and the client’s perspective. This practice had a really positive impact. The procedure was the following: In the same hotel club, hotels that had a lowered tourism activity compared to others borrowed an employee, usually for a week. The hotel covered the transportation costs and their accommodation was covered by the hotel based on room availability.

2 VisitaAkademin, Visitas’ mentoring programme Kulnet and Leadership Academy. Find Visitas’ training programmes aimed for everyone in the hospitality sector here: https://visita.se/kompetensforsorjning/utbildning-och-karriar/kulnet/

https://visita.se/kompetensforsorjning/utbildning-och-karriar/kulnet/


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Besides the academies and the internal staff training with swapping employees, in Greece there are regular seminars organised mainly by SETE, the Greek Tourism Confederation. SETE provides seminars that enhances the skills of the professionals engaged in tourism, but they are not totally covered financially. The same happens with seminars organized by other stakeholders and most SMEs are not available in financing these seminars for their employers. In this way, it is up to the employer’s choice to be updates at a professional level. Some Municipalities have provided in times financed seminars that managers and owners of hospitality SMEs were involved. In general, it seems that regarding the hotel clubs they provide seminars, and they invest in educating and updating their employees in new skills by different methods while smaller tourism enterprises, due to financial deficiency and the absence of fully funded seminars they do not invest in skills training.

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) To improve the skills, abilities and knowledge of workers, employers in Spain can select and pay for the training that best suits their requirements from a wide range of training available in our country; It is estimated that online learning alone is worth around €2 billion annually, around 2.5 million people undertook some form of online training in 2019. In case an employer do not want to pay, companies can turn to subsidised or co-financed training through the workers' vocational training quota, state funds and the European Social Fund. There are different types, but in this case only two apply:

1. Subsidised training offered by administrations aimed at workers and made up of state or sectoral courses that are aimed at those people who are working. 2. Subsidised training programmed by companies for their workers.

Although they may seem similar, there are major differences. On the one hand, subsidised courses are paid for directly by the public administration and are organised by trade union, employers' organisations, social economy associations or private centres previously approved by the administration. In addition, the administration decides on the subject matter of the courses according to the general needs of the economy. On the other hand, the training subsidised by the company is programmed by each company according to the needs of its workers, the company hires the training centre that suits best the company needs, in the modality it deems appropriate (face-to-face, e-learning or mixed), pays for it and then subsidises the cost of the course, in whole or in part, depending on the case. It is required, however, that the content of the training actions is related to the activity of the company. According to state regulations, all Spanish companies have an annual amount available to train their own employees. This amount is known as a training credit. The annual amount available at the state level comes from the amount that both companies and workers contribute monthly to the Social Security for "vocational training". Specifically, 0.7% of the contribution base is used for this purpose. The company pays 0.6% and the worker 0.1%. The public body that manages these funds and monitors their proper use is the State Foundation for Employment Training (FUNDAE). In this regard, it should be noted that last year the Spanish government approved a Training Plan to improve the skills and qualifications of the tourism sector, which includes both a wide range of subsidised courses related above all to digitalisation, and the provision of a specific


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credit for companies in the sector so that they can carry out subsidised training, from which companies in the hospitality sector will of course be able to benefit. Finally, there is another alternative that allows employers to offer training to their employees within the company. This alternative is known as collaborative learning and consists of organising training sessions given by the employees themselves from each of the company's areas. In this way, it is understood that by sharing a common purpose, "students" from different departments, experience or years in the company benefit from each other and learn in a more complete way the skills necessary to carry out their work, while at the same time allowing them to get to know the work of their colleagues, which can favour better understanding and teamwork. Sextaplanta experience and the answers given by the accommodation subsector Online training can be a great ally for companies with a small number of employees, as it gives them access to a multitude of online courses. Clear examples of this online training are: - DOMESTIKA. This online platform, where professionals from different sectors act as

virtual teachers, is a cheap option to improve your skills in the marketing, design, technology and/or architecture sector.

- COURSERA: An online platform that collaborates with many universities and companies, in which workers have access to a multitude of free courses. These courses usually have a duration from 4 to 12 weeks, in which once completed, the worker can obtain an accredited qualification. Due to its great acceptance since 2012, it currently also offers masters (Master of Accounting, of Computer Science in Data Science, of Business Administration) from the University of Illinois (USA).

- Andalucía Lab is the centre for Tourism Innovation in Andalusia, this organisation offers regional consultancy and training to small and medium-sized tourism companies in Andalusia.

As a consequence of COVID-19, and due to the standstill in the activity of all the companies, some of them made the best of this terrible situation and dedicated time to the training of their staff. There were a multitude of online training initiatives within the tourism sector in the form of courses, meetings, interviews with professionals in the sector, webinars, etc. Most of these actions were live and nowadays the recordings are kept online and can still be accessed, making them a timeless source of information and training. Some clear examples are:

A. #Teayudamos (We help you, in English) initiative: it consists of a chain of favours for tourism professionals. Thanks to the altruistic help and support of different professionals, workers in the sector were able to obtain help in the field of hotel marketing, revenue management, customer management, MICE and hotel management, among others.

B. The digital blog for hotels and flats, Habitación 61, launched a series of interviews called “Conversaciones en habitación 61” (Talks in room 61, in English), with tourism professionals and researchers. Their vision was to discern different possibilities in the scenario of the recovery of tourism activity.

C. Bedsrevenue proposed the #AhoraTurismo initiative (#NowTurism, in English), which offers access to a wide range of webinars for the free training of professionals by


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leading figures in the sector. This was the case of the webinar revenue management operative in which various indicators of hotel profitability were analysed.

These are just some examples of the multitude of actions that were created in the months of March, April and May 2020 with the onset of the pandemic. All the managers interviewed believe that, in order to grow professionally and personally within a company, it is highly advisable to continue acquiring new skills that complement the job. However, despite having all these resources available to everyone, as mentioned in the previous point, only a single manager of a tourist flat in Malaga city stated that he uses online courses provided by different platforms. This manager points out that nowadays, due to the pandemic situation, online meetups for the design of websites, blogs and/or applications can be accessed from the WordPress platform. He points out that before the coronavirus crisis, these types of meetings were only held in person, which made it difficult to attend, so most of his employees (including himself) broaden their knowledge of their website by attending courses on security, web updates or online reputation. Below, we describe two examples of specialised training and education in the tourism sector in Andalusia. The Andalusian Tourism Innovation Centre, Andalucía Lab, has two lines of action focused on improving the professional skills of the region's tourism sector. On the one hand, since 2014 Andalucía Lab has been organising a complete programme of workshops and courses on very specific topics related to digital marketing applied to tourism. These courses are given in two different formats, on the one hand, 3-hour workshops and on the other hand, monographic courses of about 10 hours. More information: https://www.andalucialab.org/cursos/ On the other hand, the second line of action developed by Andalucía Lab began in 2019 and consisted of a specific training programme aimed at attracting technological talent to the region of Andalucía. The Andalucía Hub programme consists of a training programme in the fields of programming, big data and artificial intelligence applied to tourism. More information: https://www.andalucialab.org/tt-hub/

Answers given by the restaurant and catering subsector (Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza) From the answers given by the companies interviewed by the Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza, it is striking how, although they all agree on the need to offer continuous training

https://www.andalucialab.org/cursos/

https://www.andalucialab.org/tt-hub/


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to their workers, they all equally recognise the difficulty in carrying it out. Some, for reasons that could be linked to some of the most unfavourable characteristics inherent to this subsector, such as seasonality, timetables and shifts, but others refer to the lack of will of the workers, the size of the company, and even the lack of real support from public administrations, which would contrast with what we have stated in the introduction to this section, and in which we have referred to subsidised training. We would also like to point out that one of the companies interviewed indicated that it carries out collaborative training, that is, training provided by the employees themselves, and that two of them mentioned that they provide specific training in collaboration with some of their suppliers (e.g. coffee, cocktails, etc.), which could bear some resemblance to what this project intends to do, something that could be interesting to take into account given the degree of satisfaction that this experience seems to arouse among the employers. The following are two of the examples described by companies in this regard: Makro, a chain of self-service wholesale shops selling commercial supplies, has the Makro Classroom where hoteliers can find a wide variety of training sessions, online and in person, where they can keep up to date with the latest trends in catering and gastronomy, proposals for improving the menu and the restaurant menu, suggestions for serving the best tapas at the bar, the help needed to offer a guaranteed service during the COVID-19 pandemic and even advice for opening a first hotel business (https://www.makro.es/inspiracion-asesoramiento/aula-makro?itm_pm=es:ncp:ctr:c1cn:0:0).

Cafés El Tostadero (a Spanish coffee brand), for example, has a training department in Zaragoza capital that promotes coffee culture and offers personalised advice through courses, tastings, talks and conferences to its customers, even providing them with a space (Coffee Center) where they can receive training on the world of coffee, its production process, barista arts, coffee drinks, cocktails and other subjects (https://www.eltostadero.com/coffee-center-zaragoza/) .

https://www.makro.es/inspiracion-asesoramiento/aula-makro?itm_pm=es:ncp:ctr:c1cn:0:0

https://www.makro.es/inspiracion-asesoramiento/aula-makro?itm_pm=es:ncp:ctr:c1cn:0:0

https://www.eltostadero.com/coffee-center-zaragoza/

https://www.eltostadero.com/coffee-center-zaragoza/


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Cafés el tostadero – training activities in their coffee centre

Cyprus (EDITC)

1. CLASSIC HOTEL Address: 94 Rigainis street, Nicosia https://www.classic.com.cy/ Telephone: +357 22664006

The Classic hotel started operating in the 1980s. It is situated in the heart of Nicosia within the ancient Venetian walls, very close to the Green Line. The hotel offers comfortable accommodation and a multitude of facilities just a few minutes’ walk from the city’s business and commercial centre, as well as many government offices and attractions. Within the hotel there is a restaurant, a bar and a conference room that can be used for business meetings. Each staff member has a single work position and know his/her tasks. If the manager or department supervisor wish his/her staff to get different types of experience of different tasks they first carry a skill analysis of the current employees and then they proceed with the development of the training programme. The training programme can be delivered either internally by a qualified internal trainer or externally by a training centre.

https://www.classic.com.cy/


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The staff members do not get different types of experience of different tasks through any Skills Swap activity either in their hotel or in another hotel.

2. AELIA WELLNESS RETREAT Address: 159 Gregori Afxentiou street, Tseri-Analiontas https://aeliawellness.com.cy/ Telephone:+357 22015590

Aelia is an eco-resort, which blends naturally within its pristine, natural surroundings. Is situated at the outskirts of Nicosia, between Tseri and Analiontas. Aelia boasts a state-of-the-art spa for utter relaxation, eco-friendly accommodation, and a fine-dining restaurant. Each staff member in Aelia has a single work position and know his/her tasks. The manager and department manager organize meetings to help the staff member with daily problems that occur. They also prepare analytical manual for each job and these are handed to the new employees. They also organize internal trainings for their personnel. Sometimes it is difficult to organize internal trainings because the staff work in shifts therefore is difficult to gather all personnel together. The staff members do not get different types of experience of different tasks through any Skills Swap activity either in their hotel or in another hotel.

3. VRYSAKI BEACH HOTEL Address: Amphtritis 8, Protaras https://vrissakibeachhotel.com Telephone: +357 23 831333

Vrysaki Beach Hotel is a four-star hotel. It is located in the largest beach of Protaras. The hotel has 146 luxurious and comfortable rooms, three restaurants and two bars, one luxury spa and one indoor and one outdoor pool. Each staff member has a single work position and know his/her tasks. If the manager or department supervisor wish his /her staff to get different types, of experience of different tasks he/she firstly carry a skill analysis of the current employees and then they proceed with the development of the training programme. The training programme is usually delivered internally. The staff members do not get different types of experience of different tasks through any Skills Swap activity either in their hotel or in another hotel.

4. 4 STAR HOTEL Ayia Napa

This four-star hotel belongs in a to a group of hotels that owes 4 hotels. The hotel is located in Ayia Napa. This hotel offers comfortable rooms, restaurant snack bar and pool. In this hotel, each staff member has a single work position and know his/her tasks. If the manager or department supervisor wish his/her staff to get different types of experience of different tasks they organize and deliver internal trainings. The trainings are delivered by the manager or the departments manager. The also implement a Skills Swap activity within the group of the hotels. The Skills Swap involves sending the employee in another hotel of the group to work either in the same position or in a different position. The Skills Swap takes place to improve their skills or increase their skills. Sometimes the Skills Swapping is done in order to replace one staff member from

https://aeliawellness.com.cy/


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another hotel who is on leave or is ill. Also, if one staff member wishes to get some extra money, he can acquire new skills for a new work position in another hotel in the group of hotels and perform two jobs. The hotel is not involved in any kind of Skills Swap activity with other hotels.

5. VANGELIS HOTEL & SUITES Address: 34 Protaras Avenue, Paralimni https://www.vangelishotel.com/ Telephone:+357 23834060

Vangelis Hotel & Suites is a four-star hotel located in the centre of Protaras and just two minutes’ walk from the beach. The hotel consists of 217 rooms, three restaurants, one cafeteria, one lobby bar and one pool bar. There is also one outdoor swimming pool and one indoor swimming pool. In this hotel, each staff member has a single work position and know his/her tasks. If the manager or department supervisor wish his/her staff to get different types of experience of different tasks they organize and deliver internal trainings. The trainings are delivered by the manager or the departments manager. The staff members do not get different types of experience of different tasks through any Skills Swap activity either in their hotel or in another hotel because they would not want to participate in any.

6. MYROANDROU BEACH HOTEL APARTMENTS Address: 5313 Protaras, Cyprus http://www.myroandrou.com Telephone:+357 23832810

MyroAndrou Beach Hotel Apartments is a delightful family owned and operated complex in Protaras, located directly on one of most beautiful sandy bays of Cyprus. Ideally located right on the beach, in peaceful surroundings, this beach hotel features a swimming pool and a restaurant overlooking the crystal waters of Luma bay. In this hotel, each staff member has a single position and know his/her tasks. If the manager or department supervisor wish his/her staff to get different types of experience of different tasks they organize and deliver internal trainings. However, the investment on internal training sometimes is wasted since the employees that are trained this year may not come to work to this hotel next year. The staff members get different types of experience of different tasks through Skills Swap activity within the hotel However this Skills Swapping is not always successful. The hotel is not involved in any kind of Skills Swap activity with other hotels.


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2.5 Conclusions

United Kingdom (RINOVA) We interviewed seven employers in total, across a wide range of different type of employer in the sector but their concerns and hopes for the skills swap concept were broadly similar. All interviewees were interested and optimistic about the idea of skills swapping but of course, they have reservations about the practical aspects of the swaps. Our interviews revealed that some of skills gap of most concern to employers were around soft skills rather than technical or practical skills that staff have to learn; changing attitudes and culture change are certainly something that some of the employers could offer and benefit from the group we identified. It was felt that the Skill Swap model could certainly assist in sharing good practice models and highlighting standards of soft skills required in the industry. Where there were reservations the main concerns about the practical implementation of the SS model focused on the need to make sure the process is arranged properly and that everything is agreed and in place beforehand. Attention to detail and carefully thought through processes and agreements will be essential if we are to gain the trust and co-operation of the employers. Flexibility around duration and timings, attention to detail in terms of agreements between employers and the right induction and presentation to employees to make sure it is taken seriously, were all of particular concern to employers. Certainly, all agree that there needs to be a flexible written agreement in place so that the content and aims of the skill swapping period are taken seriously and it is not seen as being a ‘break from work’. To ensure this isn’t the case there will need to be careful triage of expectation between both employers and all ‘swapping’ employees. With the imminent opening up of the sector in the UK coinciding with the summer season, many employers find themselves with much reduced staffing numbers and extra demands as a result of COVID regulations. Therefore, we need to be particularly mindful to make the process as seamless and easy as possible whilst emphasising the benefit to the employer in these difficult times. The amount of time organising and co-ordinating a Skill Swap might involve is also a major concern especially as many businesses will be a post COVID recovery situation and will be trying to re-establish their business and encourage their customers to come back. Therefore, careful planning on the part of the delivery partners is more essential than ever. Employers will also need to feel confident that the employers with whom they are going to engage in a swap of staff have the same core values and that they will enter into it in the same professional spirit. For this reason the engagement of suitable employers, familiarisation of the employers within the pool and the induction of these employers will be a key component in making sure the initial Swaps have every chance of success. Details of what employers want included in the code of conduct have already been included in 2.3.1 Two additional points which employers highlighted and which had not been included in the topic guide were; sharing of effective recruitment processes and also the need for adequate feedback to be collected from both employers and employees after the swaps take place. We welcomed this feedback from the Employers and were encouraged to see them actively contributing to the development of the project and the topic guide – both of these have been covered earlier in more detail.


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Based on the interviews and conversations we are confident that there is the possibility of some very useful skills swaps. We do not under-estimate the amount of planning and preparation involved and feel it is important in this project, more than most to put work into developing the process and model before undertaking the initial Swaps. With this trial there is the capacity to have a very definite positive or negative impact on a business and an individual member of staff role/performance and for that reason, early and thorough collaborative planning with the employers will be essential. In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, which has affected the sector like no other, we believe the Skill Swap model can make a valuable contribution to helping Sector Employers on the road to recovery, but the project is ambitious and innovative at a time when many companies may feel reluctant to take any more chances and are seeking security and routine and for this reason it will be imperative that partners put forward a well thought out and detailed process to allay any concerns and highlight the benefits of sharing their resources, learning and good practise.

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet) The hospitality sector as a whole is an important growth industry with a growing significance for Sweden’s economy and employment. Many industries, business and companies has been greatly affected by the negative impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the many of the industries within the sector is currently in a period of recovering from the challenges that has been brought to the surface now more than ever. Nonetheless, it can be said with certainty that professional skills development of staff within companies in the industry is of great relevance for the recovery and further development of the sector. Based on the consultations carried out, it can be said that companies active in the sector overall are very positive about the Skills Swap initiative, the idea and methodology of work-based learning and exchanges of competences. The main concerns and specific worries that become clear during these consultations relate to the amount of effort, resources, time and also in some respects, the courage, that the employers will need to have in order to implement the Skills Swap concept and part taking in skills swaps. However, what is noteworthy about the outcome of these consultations is that, despite the existing concerns, there seems to be a willingness and openness to what the Skills Swap projects want to achieve and develop. If the structure of the skills swaps takes into account the challenges that SMEs, the employers and the employees face on a day to day basis, the Skills Swap concept could most certainly be of great use for companies within the hospitality sector with fruitful results in both a short- and long-term perspective. Suggestions based on the Swedish findings When developing the methodology of the Skills Swap approach, it will be of utmost relevance to ensure that the individual perspective of employers is integrated in the process. Meaning that, the employers and company representatives voices need to be heard throughout the development phases. It will also be important for the Skills Swap approach to give the possibility to each employer that will part take in a skills swap, whether they act as the ‘host’ or the ‘sender’, to have a great amount of flexibility in how they choose to embrace and apply this method of skills exchange to the specific organizational structure of their company. In the Skills Swap approach, it should also be demonstrated in a very concrete way how any potential risks for the intended users are reduced. This means that there must be no doubt for employers that the potential benefits of participating in a skills swap are so much greater


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than the perceived or eventual risks associated with it. In order to do this, the project must constantly meet employers at the level at which they want to be met. This method of exchanging skills aims to strengthen the hospitality industry and increase the resilience of businesses active in it, in a long-term perspective. However, through this method the Skills Swap project must also be able to demonstrate the direct positive results that participation in the skills swap can lead to, not only for a company and business as a whole, but also for the individual employer as well as the employees. In conclusion, it will be equally important to consider aspects at the individual level of an employer, as to take into account the larger totality that industries and companies within the hospitality sector together compose.

Greece (DIMITRA) From an in-depth research in the hospitality industry in Greece and more specifically the needs and the current situation in hotels and small and medium-sized accommodation enterprises as well, the following main statements are concluded. Prior to the conclusions, it is important to note that the research took place in the Regional Unit of Magnesia in Central Greece. The choice of the geographical unit was decided due to the fact that Magnesia is a traditional but also a rising tourist destination in Central Greece, attracting not only local and Greek tourists but also foreign tourists, through the cruise tourism which is developed in the area. Magnesia is also a traditional tourist destination for some main European target groups. Another reason is the proximity of DIMITRA organisation that is based on the neighbouring Regional Unit of Larissa. Locals in Magnesia are engaged with tourism practices and since Magnesia and more specifically Pelion is comprised by small settlements, most of the hospitality accommodation units are small and medium-sized. Of course, there are some bigger hotel units and hotels that are part of hotel clubs, but SMEs are the enterprises that are mostly met in Magnesia. From our interviews with managers and owners of hospitality SMEs in the region, the first clue is that everyone showed a great interest in the Skills Swap project. Not only interest in exchanging views and practices but also an interest in future practical involvement in a skill swapping methodology to be implemented. All the professionals stated that this methodology is a sustainable method to enhance and update the training staff skills. Although, we also received answers that were affected by the COVID-19 impact. More specifically, interviewees, especially those of SMEs, were at times pessimists since their units were closed due to the pandemic and it was vague when and under what precautionary measures they would operate again. So, it was suggested that the implementation of a Skills Swap would be even more difficult during COVID period, but some of them stressed out the need to ‘exploit’ a Skills Swap practice to benefit from good practices concerning COVID precautionary measures in hospitality. Furthermore, the interviewees noted the main barriers of the skills swap practice, which were the secrecy that is a characteristic in small, family businesses as well as the ‘poaching’, health and safety issues, payment methods, insurance. As for the skills gap to be covered, in Greece, tourism professionals remain at a low level of educational and training background, despite the high tourism asset of the country. The skills gap identified by hotels but also hospitality SMEs are basic, namely there are gaps in the provision of quality customer service and customer experience, technical skills, management in specific fields and basic and high-quality digital skills. All these skills are asked for a


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hospitality business to operate functionally. At this moment of the pandemic time, the added skill of practices that would help the business survive during the pandemic is also a desideratum.

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) Throughout this report, we have tried to reflect the importance and weight that the hotel and catering sector has in the Spanish economy as a whole, as well as the difficulties it is going through, at a delicate time for the sector in the global context. In order to carry out this report, we have counted on the participation of 17 owners or managers from both the accommodation (9) and restaurant and catering (8) subsectors. From our conversations with them we can conclude that the Skills Swap project initiative has aroused great interest in the sector. Professionals from both analysed subsectors believe that the methodology of these professional swaps is viable to reinforce the training needs of their workforces. However, it is also worth noting that both sub-sectors, but especially the accommodation sub-sector, think that maybe this is not the best moment and that it would be necessary to leave the health emergency state to return to normality. Nor can we rule out the possibility that the long period of inactivity, or partial activity, and the uncertainty about the immediate future of the sector caused by the COVID-19 crisis may have conditioned some of the more pessimistic responses of the interviewees in both subsectors. It should not be forgotten that the accommodation sector in particular had closed its establishments at the time of the interviews, with a view to reopening in May 2021, although it is not yet known whether this will be possible. Similarly, it should be borne in mind that the situation of the smaller establishments surveyed is not the same as that of the larger establishments or those belonging to a business group. This means that, for these types of establishments, long-term decision-making is complex, so it is possible that this fact has also made them more reluctant or pessimistic towards the project proposed, as well as towards the future of the sector. Nor should it be forgotten that the interviewees alluded to certain economic, legal, psychological (especially related to employees), competitive and even linguistic barriers that need to be overcome. However, the general feeling is positive because also most of the interviewees seem to agree on the difficulties they have in both finding and retaining qualified staff. In both sub-sectors, one could speak of both a lack of professionalisation and a lack of professionalism in some cases. In order to overcome this competence deficit, both parties not only recognise but also accept that they have to carry out internal training activities. One of the interviewees states very graphically that they have to train those who have been chosen because they cannot choose those who have been trained. However, this type of internal training is not always easy to carry out, sometimes for reasons linked to some of the more unfavourable characteristics inherent to the sector (seasonality, working hours and shifts). However, employers also allude to the lack of will on the part of workers, the size of the company, and even the lack of real support from public administrations. As for the type of skills that employers would like to work on, the accommodation sub-sector seems to favour technical and professional skills (kitchen, dining room, reception, supervision


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and management), while among the restaurant and catering sub-sector, although some also refer to them, the most in demand seem to be soft skills (teamwork, management skills, motivation, commitment and dedication, leadership, emotional management, customer service, people management, etc.). Technological skills seem to be equally in demand in both subsectors. With regard to some practical issues that should be taken into account when implementing this initiative, such as, for example, the characteristics of the establishment, it is striking that while the accommodation subsector opens the door to carrying out exchanges with companies in the tourism sector as a whole (such as online travel agencies, revenue management companies or digital marketing companies), the restaurant and catering subsector agrees that they would like to participate with establishments that carry out the same activity, share the same concerns and degree of professionalism. In other words, while the hoteliers consulted opt for swaps among different companies in the sector in order to enrich and complement their knowledge and learn about services that are not offered in their company, restaurateurs opt for swapping skills with companies with similar characteristics, from which they can learn to perfect their way of working. As far as timing is concerned, it seems that the two sub-sectors do not agree on this issue, even taking into account the fact that the peak season of a hotel located on the coast of Malaga has nothing to do with the high season of a restaurant located in the centre of the city of Zaragoza. Regarding the duration, the answers are equally disparate, but it seems that a balance could be found in two weeks. As regards the issues that would have to be agreed and signed before participating in this initiative, all agree that legal issues would have to be clearly stated before any kind of swap between staff to avoid any incidence with the authorities, and it seems that both sub-sectors expect this to be resolved by a third party or intermediary who would also ensure compliance with what has been agreed and help the parties (employers and employees) to find a solution in the event of a conflict. In short, and as far as the implementation of the project is concerned, it would be advisable to take into account, in addition to the company's current situation and its size, the expectations about the benefit that both sub-sectors seem to expect, because they do not match completely.

Cyprus (EDITC) The consultations revealed that the following skills gap exist in:

Communication skills

ICT Skills

skills in following procedures

skill to follow procedure

skill to pay attention to details

skills among the staff within the kitchen and the bar. The managers think that Skills Swaps should take place during off seasons and the duration of the Skills Swap should be one week. The Skills Swap Partners should be matched according to the stars rating (1–5-star hotel). As one manager said he cannot send his staff from a 4-star hotel to a hotel with a lower star rating (i.e3 star hotel) and he will not accept to his 4-star hotel staff from a 3-star hotel.


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Another manager although said that he would like his staff to be placed in a hotel with a higher star rating than his own hotel in order to see how these hotels work. Some managers think that Skills Swap could be applied within a subsector and not across subsectors. Skills Swapping within a subsector would have more chances to work than across subsectors since employees will not want to go and work in a different sector. The managers recognised these barriers in organizing Skills Swap and ranked them from “biggest” barrier to the “smaller” barrier in that order:

Poaching

Health and Safety issues

How is Paying

Accountability

Insurance The managers believe that the Memorandum of Understanding can help them with the Skills Swap. However, some managers fear that even with a Memorandum of Understanding there will be the fear of one hotel stealing the other’s hotel staff. Apart from the Memorandum of Understanding, some of the managers believe that a Code of Conduct for the Skills Swap should be created and this Code of Conduct should include a point that the employees should have positive, ethical behaviour and that in the case the receiving organisation is not ethical towards the employees then the employees should report to the sending organisation and the Skills Swap Coordinator. Half of the managers from the consultation believe that this idea will not work in Cyprus because:

The culture in Cyprus is very different. In the hospitality sector neither the employer wants his employee to acquire new skills in another field and in another hotel nor the employee wants to acquire new skills in another field and go to in another hotel in order to acquire new skills

There is fear that the other organisation (hotel) will steal your staff.

There is a big shortage of staff in the hospitality sector. Therefore, the managers will not want to spend time on training a new employee because they do not have the time

The other half of the managers believed that this Skills Swap idea may work in Cyprus. As one said the Skills Swap activities could develop channels of communication between the hotels and this would be the start of building relationships. We think that Skills Swap idea could work well in Cyprus. If the Skills Swap is promoted to the employers and the employees and all the benefits of Skills Swap are clearly presented to them then the Skills Swap will succeed. Also, if the employers feel that a “safe environment” is created around the idea then they will wish to participate in the swapping. In order to create this safe environment, we must take into account all of their concerns and fears. The development of a Code of Conduct for the Skills Swap containing the following points would definitely help:

Go to work on time

Maintain required work schedule.

Follow all rules and policies as required by your supervisor.

Maintain strict confidentiality regarding information obtained on any customers and employees in the receiving organisation


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Do not disclose any information about the management, the financial data, the employees, the customers of the sending organisation

Use appropriate written and oral communication in all interactions with all supervisors, employees, customers

Follow all health and safety rules of the receiving organisation. If you observe that health and safety rules are not followed then report to the department manager of the receiving organisation and to the sending organisation

Demonstrate honesty, cooperation, integrity, courtesy, and a willingness to learn.

Engage in positive, ethical, and legal behaviour.

Accept responsibility and accountability for actions taken while at the receiving organisation

Treat the department manager, employees and customers of the receiving organisation with dignity and respect

Report any problems that occur to the department manager of the receiving organisation and to the sending organisation

In case the receiving organisation is not ethical towards the employee then report to the sending organisation and the Skills Swap Coordinator


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2.6 Acknowledgements

United Kingdom (RINOVA) We would like to thank the following people who agreed to be interviewed for this study:

Name Position Organisation

Sebastian Ryder Chef and hospitality consultant Outsourced

Muriel Di Biase Cluster People and development manager (HR)

Wellesley Hotel

Joanne Taylor Stagg

General Manager The Athenaeum Hotel

Andy and Sheryl Rushbridge

Business owners Rushbridge hair and beauty

Jonathan De Beer Managing Director Rise London

Edward Plunkett Managing director City of London Club

Kemi Akinola Manager Be enriched (Charity)

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet)

We would like to thank the following people who agreed to be interviewed for this study:


Oscar Engqvist CEO Söderhamn & Company, Stenö Havskrog, Statt Restaurang, Club Oscar

Anne Nyholm Fmr. Housekeeping Manager Clarion Hotel Winn

Per Mellström Recruitment specialist and CEO Huvudverket i Sverige AB

Maria Tallén General Manager Clarion Hotel Winn, Gävle

Mia Ulin Communications Manager, Business Developer

Affärskompetens Sverige

Tomas Agner Destination Developer Näringslivsbolaget Sundsvall

Greece (DIMITRA) DIMITRA would like to thank all the participants during the research for their time and disposition in exchanging their opinions on the subject. On the following table a list of the interviewees is presented, whom we would like to thank in particular.


Niki Zouzoula Manager/Owner Zouzoulas Filoxenia – Koralia Apartments

Dimitrios Tsoutsoulakis Manager Domotel Xenia Volos

Meletios Andrinos Manager Kritsas Hotel

Christina Chrisostomidou Manager Domotel Xenia


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Thanasis Mparoutas President of the Association of Hospitality Units in Zagora, Pelion

Association of Hospitality Units in Zagora, Pelion

Dimitris Pappas Manager Xenia Palace Portaria

Giorgos Mpotsivalis Manager/Owner Valis Resort

Paris Koniordos Manager Leda Resort

Spain (Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce & Sextaplanta) We, Sextaplanta and the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce, would like to thank all the professionals who agreed to take part of our national report for the time they have dedicated us at a time of great uncertainty for their businesses, some of them having their establishments still closed, after a year with hardly any activity or income. We therefore appreciate the time and enthusiasm with which they have taken the time to participate in the study. The information they have provided is of great value to us. We would also like to thank HORECA Zaragoza for their collaboration and support both in the desk research about the market and in carrying out the interviews.


INTERVIEWEES BY SEXTAPLANTA

Santiago Roca Director and owner Hotel Cortijo del Arte

Sonia González Director and owner Hotel de los Faroles

Christina Piek Director and owner Hotel La Fuente de la

Higuera

Juan Luis Ruiz Director and owner Apartamentos Turísticos

Marqués de Guadiaro

Elena Maestro Pacheco Director and owner ria Hotel Cortijo El Esparragal

Ignacio Shaw Director and owner Apartamentos Letmalaga

Carlos Piernas Director Hotel Riscal

Pepe Ramírez Director and owner Pensión Serramar

Juan Clavero Director and owner Hotel Molino del Arco

INTERVIEWEES BY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF ZARAGOZA

Employers

José Antonio Márquez Manager Grupo Canterbury

R. F Without express consent to

provide this information

Without express consent to

provide this information

Óscar Navascués Propietario La Rinconada de Lorenzo

José María Lasheras General Director Grupo La Bastilla

José Antonio Palau Director Grupo Ilunion

Maite Barra Owner La Parrilla de Albarracín

Pedro Villanueva Director

Balneario de Ariño

Hospedería de Rueda

Restaurante La Alcuza


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Jorge Lara Owner Restaurante Goralai

Employees

Irene Márquez Artal Barwoman Epsilon Eventos

Susana Rohelova Waitress Bar LaLola

Daniela Cook Grupo Canterbury

Cyprus (EDITC) We would like to thank the following people who agreed to be interviewed for this study:


Andreas Marcou Manager Classic Hotel

Meropi Mavrigiorogou Front Desk Manager AELIA WELLNESS RETREAT

Xenis Yiangou Manager Vrisaki Beach Hotel

Yiannos Anastasiou Manager Vangelis Hotel & Suites

Soteris Georgiou Manager 4 star hotel in Ayia Napa*

Adamos Maouris Manager Myroandrou Beach Hotel Apartments

*The manager requested not to disclose the hotel’s name


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2.7 References

United Kingdom (RINOVA) 1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/tourismindustry/articles/coronavirusand

theimpactontheuktravelandtourismindustry/2021-02-15 2. Caterer.com 3. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/priceseconomicanalysis

quarterly/october2020 4. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme 5. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/25/eat-out-to-help-out-venues-claimed-

more-than-849m-through-scheme 6. https://www.capital-law.co.uk/news/2020/10/19/new-immigration-system-implications-for-

the-hospitality-sector/ 7. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9111/ 8. https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2021/03/04/Jobs-round-up-Spring-Budget-

2021-skills-shortage 9. http://www.propelinfo.com/pi-Newsletter-mon.php?datetime=20180205080000 10. https://trailapp.com/blog/two-solutions-to-hospitalitys-brexit-staff-shortage 11. https://www.boutiquehotelnews.com/features/how-digitisation-will-help-uk-hospitality-

face-staff-shortages-in-2021-and-beyond 12. https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/skills-gap-hospitality-industry 13. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_

data/file/827952/Hospitality_and_Tourism_Workforce_Landscape.pdf 14. BEIS, Business Population Estimates 2020, 1 October 2020, 15. Business where at least half of the leadership team are women or come from minority

ethnic groups, respectively. BEIS, Small Business Survey 2019: businesses with employees, 4 June 2020

16. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2020 17. https://www.residential-estates.co.uk/blog/property-COVID-19-and-rise-staycation 18. https://www.standard.co.uk/escapist/travel/uk-holidays/staycation-booking-statistics-

england-2020-a4479766.html 19. https://hotelierscharter.com/ 20. https://masterinnholders.co.uk/midas/ 21. https://springboard.uk.net/

Sweden (Folkuniversitetet)

Web articles 1. Tillväxtverket. (Published 2020-09-30). Turismens årsbokslut 2019. Tillväxtverket.se.

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat 2. Visita. (Retrieved 2021-03-01). Branschfakta, Besöksnäringen totalt. Visita.se.

https://visita.se/branschfakta/ 3. Tillväxtverket. (Published 2018-05-04). Turismföretagen vill växa men hittar inte arbetskraft.

Tillväxtverket.se. https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fovven-2017/2018-05-04-turismforetagen-vill-vaxa-men-hittar-inte-arbetskraft.html

4. Tillväxtverket. (Published 2020-07-08). Huvudresultat från Företagens villkor och verklighet 2020. Tillväxtverket.se. https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fvov-2020/2020-07-08-huvudresultat-fran-foretagens-villkor-och-verklighet-2020.html

5. Visita. (2019-09-04). Utbildning för medlemmar. Visita.se. https://visita.se/kompetensforsorjning/utbildning-och-karriar/kulnet/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/tourismindustry/articles/coronavirusandtheimpactontheuktravelandtourismindustry/2021-02-15

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/tourismindustry/articles/coronavirusandtheimpactontheuktravelandtourismindustry/2021-02-15

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/priceseconomicanalysisquarterly/october2020

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/priceseconomicanalysisquarterly/october2020

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/25/eat-out-to-help-out-venues-claimed-more-than-849m-through-scheme

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/25/eat-out-to-help-out-venues-claimed-more-than-849m-through-scheme

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9111/

http://www.propelinfo.com/pi-Newsletter-mon.php?datetime=20180205080000

https://trailapp.com/blog/two-solutions-to-hospitalitys-brexit-staff-shortage

https://www.boutiquehotelnews.com/features/how-digitisation-will-help-uk-hospitality-face-staff-shortages-in-2021-and-beyond

https://www.boutiquehotelnews.com/features/how-digitisation-will-help-uk-hospitality-face-staff-shortages-in-2021-and-beyond

https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/skills-gap-hospitality-industry

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/827952/Hospitality_and_Tourism_Workforce_Landscape.pdf

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/827952/Hospitality_and_Tourism_Workforce_Landscape.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2020

https://www.residential-estates.co.uk/blog/property-covid-19-and-rise-staycation

https://www.standard.co.uk/escapist/travel/uk-holidays/staycation-booking-statistics-england-2020-a4479766.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/escapist/travel/uk-holidays/staycation-booking-statistics-england-2020-a4479766.html

https://hotelierscharter.com/

https://masterinnholders.co.uk/midas/

https://springboard.uk.net/

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fran-turismundersokningar/2020-09-30-turismens-arsbokslut-2019.html

https://visita.se/branschfakta/

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fovven-2017/2018-05-04-turismforetagen-vill-vaxa-men-hittar-inte-arbetskraft.html

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fovven-2017/2018-05-04-turismforetagen-vill-vaxa-men-hittar-inte-arbetskraft.html

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fvov-2020/2020-07-08-huvudresultat-fran-foretagens-villkor-och-verklighet-2020.html

https://tillvaxtverket.se/statistik/vara-undersokningar/resultat-fvov-2020/2020-07-08-huvudresultat-fran-foretagens-villkor-och-verklighet-2020.html

https://visita.se/kompetensforsorjning/utbildning-och-karriar/kulnet/


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Reports 1. Tillväxtverket (2019). Fakta om svensk turism 2018 (0282). Tillväxtverket.

https://tillvaxtverket.se/download/Rapport_Fakta%20om%20svensk%20turism_2018.pdf 2. Tillväxtverket (2016). Kompetensförsörjning och kompetensbehov inom svensk besöksnäring

(0197). Tillväxtverket. https://startup-sweden.se/download/ 3. Tillväxtverket (2017). Företagens villkor och verklighet 2017 Huvudrapport (0232 n.1).

Tillväxtverket. https://tillvaxtverket.se/download/.pdf 4. Tillväxtverket (2020). Turism och besöksnäring efter coronapandemin, En nuläges- och

scenarioanalys. Tillväxtverket. https://tillvaxtverket.se/download/.pdf 5. Besöksnäringens forsknings- och utvecklingsfond, BFUF (2019). Karriär i besöksnäringen, En

studie av rörlighet och karriärvägar inom svensk besöksnäring (11). file:///C://Rorlighet_karriarvagar.pdf (to open), https://bfuf.se/publikationer/ (to download).

6. Besöksnäringens forsknings- och utvecklingsfond, BFUF (2014). TILLVÄXTVÄRK? Kartläggning av kompetensbehovet inom hotell och restaurangbranschen till år 2023 (02). file:///C:/BFUF_rapport_2_Tillvaxtvark.pdf (to open), https://bfuf.se/projekt/tillvaxtvark/ (to download).

7. Myndigheten för yrkeshögskolan (2014). Regional efterfrågan på kompetens och utbildning inom yrkeshögskolan (MYH 2014/691). https://www.myh.se/Documents/Publikationer/Rapporter/2014/Regional-efterfragan-yrkeshogskolan.pdf

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