dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

Employment and training
year training in tourism, as well as 24 traditional secondary schools with possibilities to
specialise in tourism. Theme training courses can also be added to these general training
establishments. In France, the association for the training of rural workers for tourism (AFRAT)
has, for instance, trained more than 12 000 students since its creation, with the objective of
developing multi-activity agriculture (59% of the graduates have multi-activity employment). The
training offer attempts to satisfy the needs of a variety of tourist professions – from open-air
guides to managers of farm accommodation – and to adapt to the changes in the clients’
expectations, with for example the creation of courses in local cuisine.
The EU « Leonardo da Vinci » programme groups together international programmes involving
various types of training institutes for tourism: training bodies, professional schools, universities,
private operators, chambers of commerce, and so on. Its objective is to increase the mobility of
professionals in tourism, to encourage innovation while at the same time improving the quality of
the training. The projects aspire to increasing the awareness of the social, environmental and
economic values of tourism by these professionals. They also involve training modules oriented
to cultural and national heritage tourism (Cultural Heritage Tourism Network in Cyprus, Greece
and Spain), ecological tourism (the ESOPE project in France and Italy) and aid for the creation
and management of tourist enterprises (Women in Tourism, in Greece).
2.2. Insufficient training
Training is a determining stake for the future of Mediterranean tourism, because it is a sector of
activity in which traditionally the workers are unskilled. According to a report by the Turkish
Ministry of Tourism in 1996, out of 265 000 primary tourist jobs, 34% of the workers had a
primary school level of education, 23% had a lower technical diploma, 29% a secondary school
diploma and 14% a higher education diploma. Morocco in 1990 counted 49% of unskilled
workers, 36% with a lower technical diploma, 2.9% with a higher technical diploma and only
0.9% of executives. In Greece in 1995 more than half of the tourist jobs were unskilled ones.
Frame 8: Tourism and employment of young people in the Balearic Isles (Spain)
The rate of unemployment for 15-29 year olds in the Balearic Isles is only 9.9% compared to 20% in
the rest of Spain. At the age of 18, more than half of the inhabitants of the archipelago have a job,
while 66% of the youth in Spain continue their studies. Only 7% have professional training,
compared to the 14% average in the rest of Spain. 37% of the under 25s entering the job market
have no professional diploma and have not even finished their secondary level studies. Tourism
proposes many jobs on the islands without requiring high qualifications. Although these jobs are
seasonal and precarious, they are sufficiently well remunerated to enable a single young man to
make a living for the year. The authorities of the islands are afraid that when their financial needs
grow or if tourism on the islands goes down, they will not be able to hold a more skilled, long-term
job because of a lack of skills (the latter type of jobs are taken by people from the continent of
Spain). The sandwich-course programmes that the government of the islands put in place have not
had the expected success, as the enterprises do not see the utility of sending their young employees
for training when their lack of qualifications is not an obstacle for the jobs they hold.
Source : from “Le Monde”, 01/13/2004
After a period of spontaneous development, tourism has entered a movement of
professionalism and planning. Competition between destinations and clients’ growing demands
have brought to the fore the objective of quality, the training of staff being one of its essential
components. In the emerging destinations one of the obstacles to development of tourism, apart
from lack of available capital, is the absence of qualified managers and entrepreneurs.
Although training possibilities have developed in recent years, there is still an inadequate offer
compared to the demand in tourism. In Morocco an analysis of the success rate of national
tourism development plans demonstrates that training was the least successful (between 20%
and 74% succeeded according to plan, see below, Table 13). A report made in 1994 noted that
the posts were badly distributed, with too many posts than were theoretically necessary in the
top hotel industry and insufficient posts in the holiday camps. A shortage of executives was
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