This report focuses on enhancing skills development and career progression for people employed in small, medium and micro-sized tourism enterprises (SMEs), to create more and better tourism jobs. The contribution quality jobs can make to building a competitive and sustainable tourism sector is discussed in the first section, followed by analysis of the sector’s labour intensity and labour market characteristics, which put significant strain on businesses to attract, retain and develop a skilled workforce, with productivity and competitiveness implications. Around half of the tourism workforce in OECD countries works in enterprises employing fewer than 10 people, while around three quarters work in enterprises employing fewer than 50 people. SMEs face a range of practical difficulties and constraints when it comes to making the most of the human resources available in the enterprise and planning for future skill needs. SMEs also typically lack the capacity and resources available in larger organisations to facilitate and encourage workforce development. The recurrent nature of interlinked challenges in the sector (seasonality, high share of SMEs, working conditions, recruitment and retention difficulties, high turnover and vacancy rates, poor image and weak training culture etc.) has implications for tourism workers and for the quality of tourism jobs, business performance and tourism growth. This highlights the need for innovative workforce development approaches to address these challenges and structural issues and underscores the need for comprehensive responses, with active involvement of public and private actors.
