#Tourism Online education: the strongest opportunity to redefine jobs in times of COVID-19
Tourism has experienced ten years of economic growth. Nonetheless, that strong revolution has created a new challenge: having our tourism professionals updated as fast as tourism is growing.
Some facts and figures from UNWTO that confirm my statement:
Tourism total export earnings has reached USD 1.7 trillion in 2018, or almost USD 5 billion a day on average. On the other hand, international tourism (travel and passenger transport) accounts for 29% of the world’s services exports and 7% of overall exports of goods and services.
For the seventh year in a row, growth in tourism exports (+4%) was higher than growth in merchandise exports (+3%) in 2018.
Those amazing facts, are now under risk regarding all the travel restrictions and the hard times we are facing with COVID-19 spreading all around the world.
Inside the World Tourism Organization we expect that international tourist arrivals will be down by 20% to 30% in 2020 when compared with 2019 figures.
A positive fact is that after the last economic crisis, UNWTO have faced that tourism can accelerate job creation: to give and example, employment in all sectors grew by 11% between 2010 and 2018 while employment in accommodation and food services grew 35%.
With that said, we are at a tipping point where we need to redefine and rethink how to increase the number of high skilled tourism professionals and help them to recover tourism after this health crisis end.
We need to mind that strong gap between the labour supply and the labour growth and go from low to medium level technical jobs to high end and added value jobs.
On the other hand, we have another positive fact: the digital revolution on tourism makes the sector more exigent to create new solutions in order to help our tourism human capital to grow and increase their managerial knowledge.
As my role inside the UNWTO is focused on innovation and digital transformation, I have a strong invitation to do for all who aim to work in the tourism sector and strengthen their leadership skills:
Just some months ago, we had the pleasure to launch the first United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Tourism Online Academy powered by IE University: the first online education platform focused on tourism.
The UNWTO Tourism Online Academy is an online learning platform that offers 100% related to the tourism sector: digital transformation, travel marketing and sustainability, are just some of the options you can explore in the platform.
The best part: Massive Online Open Courses are free and you only pay if you want an official certificate. If you want to gain deep skills, you’re option is to do an Online Certificate Program.
I’m pretty sure and convinced that using the tourism online academy is part of the solution to mind that existing gap and bring skills to the most interested in updating their knowledge through digital platforms.
Today we offer two main courses on tourism management but the good thing is that we are creating the next phase including top universities from America, Europa, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to upload their content and make the Online Academy, the top reference for Tourism Online Education.
Take the change and enrol the courses here:
https://www.unwto-tourismacademy.ie.edu/
Take the chance, stay at home and be prepared to travel tomorrow!