Implementation period: 01/11/2021 – 01/12/2023
Funding stream: ERASMUS +
Project number: 2020-1-ES01-KA202-083137
PROJECT PRESENTATION
The hospitality and tourism industry is faced with the many challenges of communicating in intercultural environments. According to HOTREC (The Trade Association for Hotels, Restaurants and Cafés in Europe), more than one third of tourist accommodation managers (including owners) and employees have a limited level of cultural awareness and the general level of intercultural training is lower in the hospitality sector than in other sectors of the EU economy.
The InterCulturalHotels project aims to develop an innovative intercultural training framework for the hospitality sector that can be adapted to the real needs of professionals. The new intercultural training programme is not intended to make hospitality staff and stakeholders (including owners) experts in cultural issues, but to prepare them for situations that may arise when dealing with foreign cultures and to build a mindset based on intercultural awareness.
THE PROCESS OBJECTIVES ARE TO:
- Broaden the intercultural awareness of the hospitality staff;
- Establish a more creative and collaborative working environment in hospitality; 3. Increase the competitiveness of the hospitality sector in Europe;
- To promote an inclusive and equitable workplace culture;
- Introduce an educational model that aligns with the realities of the hospitality industry; and where possible, include VET tutors and students;
- Offer localised and contextualised educational content;
- Prepare the intercultural and linguistic capacity of hotel staff for the upcoming tourism markets of Russia and China;
- Enhance guests’ cultural experience;
- Help build interpersonal connections and facilitate interpersonal processes in a multicultural workforce.
TARGETS:
- Vocational training in the area of cultural awareness and hospitality
- Hospitality managers and staff, tourism stakeholders or social partners
- Hotel and tourism business owners
- Hospitality guests
- Stakeholders in the tourism industry
- Communities and regional governments whose economies depend on tourism.
Project products:
RESEARCH
To conduct a wider research on the current state of knowledge in the areas of intercultural training and to identify intercultural challenges and gaps that still exist in hospitality in the partner countries. The results of the research will be used to help the partners determine the specific needs of professionals in the hospitality sector, to define the training methodology to be followed and, finally, to improve intercultural training procedures on a practical basis.
STUDY
To compare existing cultural models and intercultural training programmes in order to identify the weaknesses and strengths of current cultural models and to highlight the features that will be used in the new training framework from existing models.
TRAINING PROTOTYPE
To derive a new intercultural training prototype, adapted to the local context of each partner country, which is more effective and reliable, to prepare hospitality workers for the surprises that may arise in a foreign cultural situation.
To offer new innovative intercultural training to influence hospitality staff so that they are not only aware, but actually prepared to deal with intercultural issues that they might face daily in their workplaces.
Partnership:
Coordinator: Munster Tech University – Ireland
Dekaplus Business Services – Cyprus
EDEX EDucational EXcellence – Cyprus
CWEP – Poland
OECON management & consulting group – Greece
BDF Stichting Business Development – Netherlands
Plovdiv University – Bulgaria
Klaipedos Turism – Lithuania
LABC srl – Italy
Institute for Tourism Celje – Slovenia
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