The Tourism Thematic Team (TTT) is a working group for research and innovation in the tourism sector, organised under the aegis of EfVET, the leading European network of technical and vocational education and training founded in 1991. The European Forum of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (EfVET) has more than 1,500 professional and technical institutes from all over Europe (for a total of 600,000 students and approximately 50,000 professionals) who thus have the opportunity to network, to share best teaching practices and interact with the European institutions.
The EfVET TTT was born in 2021 and it is coordinated by Apro Formazione (Italy), Landstede Groep (Netherlands) and Sedu (Finland) and today gathers over 67 VET providers from 14 countries.
In its first year, the TTT members worked divided into subgroups on four areas: ‘Sustainable and Green Tourism’, ‘Digitisation in Tourism’, ‘Mobility and Work-Based Learning in Tourism Education’ and ‘Future Scenarios of Tourism’. Among the first results: an analysis of market trends in tourism, a handbook on new digital tools to enhance the tourism offer and a selection of good practices on sustainability in tourism. During the last TTT conference in Zwolle, the Netherlands, a new approach and a set of new specific objectives were defined. These include the analysis of skills gaps and market trends in tourism, the organisation of international competitions related to sustainability and the organisation of thematic master classes on innovation.
The crowning achievement of the first year was the recognition of the TTT as ‘best performer’ among all EfVET thematic teams. The first year closed with a positive balance in the number of team members, with the achievement of important results, both in the development of shared activities and future projects. The TTT’s annual conference (6, 7, 8 March 2023 in Alba) is intended to be the opening moment of a second year that aims at even more ambitious goals.
