Brussels, 05/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On 25 May of this year, the European Commission is to present an action plan to promote new skills ('New skills agenda') to get people onto the employment market, and which will aim to allow the tourist sector to adapt to the challenges of tomorrow, the Commissioner for the Single Market, Elzbieta Bienkowska, said on Tuesday 5 April at the high-level conference on investing on the skills of tourism held in Brussels.
“The current skills of tourism professionals do not enable them to keep up with the rapid evolution of customised consumer demand, demographic changes and digitalisation” she explained, stressing that professional training is a long way behind current expectations and future trends. The Commissioner laid emphasis on the importance of adopting a strategy to develop skills for “new jobs”, which will be presented next month (EUROPE 11507).
Bienkowska went on to detail three areas of action to reinforce investment in the tourism sector, namely: helping SMEs to access financing through work on the Capital Markets Union (EUROPE 11399); the provision by the EU of guarantees to facilitate private-sector investment through the 'Juncker' plan (EUROPE 11323), and making the most of the structural and investment funds and the European programmes aimed at the tourism sector.
Although it represents a considerable proportion of European GDP (9.7% of GDP, providing work for 24 million people), the tourism sector in Europe is losing ground to international competition, falling from 51% of the global market in 2000 to below 40% last year. This market share is expected to fall to 31% by 2030, according to the Commissioner. Given this anticipated decline, the sector has been calling for a relaxation of the 'Schengen' visa regime, but its hopes of this were doused in October 2015 (EUROPE 11412). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)