INCLUSIVE TOURISM SERVICE is a strategic partnership project for vocational education and training during which we plan to promote social inclusion and equity in the domain of tourism by training managers and offering the ongoing means of training their own staff to deal with all categories of people with special needs. Tourism is a domain which should be accessed by all the people without exception, including those who require special attention. To make it possible and at the same time to be able to provide quality services for this segment of clients we need to train the staff to deal with such people properly. That is why we are planning to add to the training course in Tourism domain an extra module which will teach them how to deal with people with special needs as being customers. To make this additional module as practical and useful as possible we will also create an Instruction Guide for Hotel Employees - How to deal with clients with special needs - as all interested personnel of the travel agencies, hotels, B&B can use it to instruct themselves or their employees in order to provide quality services to all categories of the customers. In this project we are 4 partners from 3 countries, 2 VET providers and 3 organizations active in the economic sector in tourism - a hotel, a travel agency and a guesthouse. The main objectives of our project are: 1. To improve the skills and competences of managers in tourism by providing them a new approach in training regarding how to deal with clients with special needs on international level; 2. To improve the contain of the training courses by adding a new chapter regarding how to deal with clients with special needs 3. To promote social inclusion of people with special needs by offering them qualified services; 4. To combat discrimination by training other people how to deal with people with special needs; 5. To develop partnerships on the local, national and international level between VET providers and actors on the labour market. The main beneficiaries of the new created approach in training the managers in tourism will be: - VET providers in partners’ countries. The new; - travel agencies, B&B, hotels. The created outputs will be created and disseminated to local, national and, if possible, international VET providers and will be promoted to the representatives from touristic segment of the economic sector. The main target group will be represented by: - managers in tourism domain who will take part in training; - people with special need will be able to get qualified services while applying for the touristic services. We plan to create three intellectual outputs: 1. Improved training course in Domain of Tourism - we will add one new module regarding how to deal with clients with special needs; 2. Instruction Guide for Hotel Employees - How to deal with clients with special needs. 3. Online Diary of those who participated at the training Tourism is one of the domains which is constantly growing and developing in EU countries and we need always to adapt our training system to the changes which are brought in this domain along with the requirements of the modern society. And our modern society is changing all the time becoming more and more complex. As we promote social inclusion and equity in all domains, we need to be prepared to deal with all segments of our modern society. An important segment of nowadays society is represented by the people with special needs who require our special attention and in consequence we need to be trained to deal with them properly. There will be organized 4 learning/training activities in order to reach the main objectives of the project: C1 - Short-term staff training "LEARN TO OFFER QUALITY INCLUSIVE SERVICES"; C2-C4 - Blended mobility of the learners "EVERYBODY INCLUDED - WE KNOW HOW TO DO IT!" There will be 12 staff members and 48 managers participating at these trainings. To promote the created outputs of the project and to assure their sustainability we plan to organize 10 multiplier events – 2 in each partner organization. There will be 275 participants at these events. 1. Multiplier Events E1-E5 "INCLUSIVE TOURISM SERVICES" 2. Multiplier Event E6-E10 "QUALITY INCLUDES ALL" We expect this project will produce the desired impact at the local, regional, national and international level: - to develop partnerships between VET providers and organizations active in socio-economic sector in domain of tourism - to promote social inclusion of the people with special needs; - to contribute to the improvement of the National Vocational training in domain of tourism; -to increase the number of the successful projects producing useful outputs for organizations active in socio-economic sector in domain of tourism; - to create partnership and working relationships between organization from several European countries; - to foster quality improvements, innovation excellence and internationalisation at the level of VET providers
Objective 1 - To improve the skills and competences of managers in tourism domain by providing them a new approach in training regarding how to deal with clients with special needs on international level. To achieve this objective we together with our partners: 1. Worked together with the organisations active in socio-economic sector in domain of tourism: 2. Organized Blended mobilities for learners in three different EU countries and trained the participants to deal with people with different types of handicap. 3. Created IO 1 - Improved training course in Domain of Tourism - one new module regarding how to deal with clients with special needs 4. Created IO2 - Instruction Guide for Hotel Employees - How to deal with clients with special needs. 5. Created IO3 - Online Diary of those who participated at the training Objective 2 - To improve the contain of the training courses by adding a new chapter regarding how to deal with clients with special needs. To achieve this objective we together with our partners: 1. Trained the staff members of partner during C1 - Short-term staff training "LEARN TO OFFER QUALITY INCLUSIVE SERVICES" 2. Created IO 1 - Improved training course in Domain of Tourism - one new module regarding how to deal with clients with special needs 3. Created IO2 - Instruction Guide for Hotel Employees - How to deal with clients with special needs. 4. Created IO3 - Online Diary of those who participated at the training Objective 3 - To promote social inclusion of people with special needs by offering them qualified services. Objective 4 - To combat discrimination by training other people how to deal with people with special needs To achieve these objectives we together with our partners:: - Created IO 1 - Improved training course in Domain of Tourism - one new module regarding how to deal with clients with special needs - Created IO2 - Instruction Guide for Hotel Employees - How to deal with clients with special needs. - Created IO3 - Online Diary of those who participated at the training - we created an website of the project (https://inclusive-tourism-service.com)were we shared all our experiences with others, promoting social inclusion With the help of these created outputs the managers were and will be able to train their own staff and offering qualified services to those with special needs. Objective 5 - To develop partnerships on the local, national and international level between VET providers and actors on the labour market. It was fully achieved through the entire work of the project, through management, project meetings, online meetings. The partnership was created between VET providers and touristic companies, they worked all together, sharing opinions, exchanged practices, created new partnerships with similar organizations from the partner countries.
Social inclusion and combating discrimination within VET training - these are the goals we identified as being common in all partner organizations within the created partnership. Tourism is one of the domains which is constantly growing and developing in EU countries, and we need always to adapt our training system to the changes which are brought in this domain along with the requirements of the modern society. As VET providers we keep in touch with the main actors on the labour market in each domain in order to get feedback of the training they need and training we provide .And in the domain of tourism we lately discovered a crucial lack in our training contain, a lack which highly effects the business of our direct beneficiaries - travel agencies, hotels, B&B. In the domain of tourism qualified personnel is not prepared to deal with this sector of clients and they are forced to decline such demands because of the lack in their training. And all this leads us to discrimination and social exclusion of the people with special needs because we are not prepared to deal with them in all domains. And that is how the idea of this project was born - to help managers in tourism to improve their training to deal with people with special needs and in this way to be able to develop their business and to promote social inclusion combating discrimination. We created a partnership between VET providers and organizations active in socio-economic sector in domain of tourism to be able to develop an effective innovative approach and to implement it in work-based settings. The main beneficiaries of the new created approach in training the managers in tourism were: - VET providers in partners’ countries. - travel agencies, B&B, hotels. The main target group was represented by: - managers and employees in tourism domain who took part in training; - people with special need will be able to get qualified services while applying for the touristic services.