Final Closing Conference of INMATOUR project: European Manager of Innovation in Intelligent and Responsible Tourism Destinations
The 2020 Strategy states that reinforcement of European tourism competitiveness is a priority action. An effort is needed to improve the professional skills in this area, in particular to facilitate its adaptation to new technologies and the new market expectations and promote mobility as stated in the report New Skills for New Jobs (2010). The EC report “The Future of Learning: Preparing for Change” puts the promotion of talent and innovation among the challenges of vocational training and lifelong learning to develop an intelligent economy, based on knowledge and innovation.
DOCUMENTA, detected this need to match vocational training studies in Tourism with sector development and, in this sense, it is essential to deal with a continuous re-skilling in order to face fast and competitive changes in the tourist market. Both employees of large tourism companies, as SMEs, entrepreneurs or professionals in the public sector and people working in areas such as planning, management, provision and tourism promotion need to update their knowledges and upgrade their skills and competencies in order to develop innovation in European tourism destinations.
INMATOUR project, under Erasmus+ call, has faced this need during the last two years to improve the qualification and the updating of training in of a wide spectrum of tourism professionals to adapt to the new requirements of the sector within a knowledge-based economy, defining a new professional profile “Innovation Manager of Innovation in Intelligent and Responsible Tourism Destinations” and also training contents associated to the profile.
To disseminate results of the project and present the project’s final publication was the aim of this Closing Conference organized by DOCUMENTA on October 17th 2016 in Santander, with the collaboration of Escuela Superior de Turismo Altamira.
Over 50 people attended the conference: institutions responsibles, training centers, trainers and educative authorities, students of tourism and respresentants of the organizations who have participated as partners in the implementation of this project in Cyprus, Greece, Sweden and UK, apart from DOCUMENTA in Spain.
The Closing Conference was opened by D. Ángel Herrero as Director of Escuela and Javier Farto as President of DOCUMENTA, and started with the presentation made by Javier Farto on the final publication, showing the model of Management of Innovation in Smart Tourism Destination and the new INMATOUR profile defined within the project.
Subsequently, the whole partnership with one representant per organization, made a presentation of training contents of the profile around five areas of knowledge:
– Creativity & Fostering Talent, RINOVA (UK)
– Sustainability, FOLUNIVERSITETET (Sweden)
– Smart Destination and ICT, MMC (Cyprus)
– Gobernance and Social Participation, DOCUMENTA (Spain)
– From Corporate Social Responsibility to Territorial Social Responsibility, DIMITRA (Greece)
The Closing Conference ended with the presentation of the two main on-line support tools developed: online training platform with all training contents previously presented by the partners and the European Network / Social Virtual Community as common space for collaborative learning and exchange of experiences and know-how for professionals, students of the sector and other interested persons
From DOCUMENTA we want to thank the Escuela Superior de Turismo Altamira for facilitating the facilities, the support received and contributing to the success of the conference; as well as to the partners of the project without whom this would not have been possible.
