Boosting tourism business growth through higher vocational education

The project’s main result is a joint curriculum and a study programme of 32 ects in advanced tourism business development. The programme is implemented online in English by distance learning. Courses (4 x 5 ects and 4 x 3 ects) are divided between the partners based on their expertise. Every partner organizes a 5 ects core course and a 3 ects course providing specialized knowledge. The programme is created with the tourism industry and around real-life tourism business cases in order to support the industry development and to achieve stronger integration of learning and local tourism enterprises. Thus, SMEs co-operating with the project partners provide cases to the courses that are jointly solved. The programme is placed at level 6 of the European Qualifications Framework.

The programme is targeted to higher vocational education students (bachelor level) but also tourism sector workers can participate through open university. The content of the curriculum and the study programme is based on the reseach results identifying the joint skillset and competencies. Each PP sends second or third year tourism students and SME's workers to participate in joint courses.

The programme is implemented using joint eLearning platform, and one course of 3 ects is organized as an innovation camp (1 x 5 days) in Kuressaare. In the programme also joint teaching material, teacher's guide and coaching events for CB region tourism lecturers about the curriculum and the programme are produced. Altogether 150 students from CB countries participate to the programme.

The result indicator for the objective is the share of aligned vocational education and training (VET) programmes in the CB region: the project result links directly to that by designing a joint curriculum and implementing a joint study programme (32 ects) in the CB region. The curriculum is spread in Finnish, Estonian and Latvian higher education institutions in the CB region.