INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Issue 1, Volume 6, 2012 Hospitality and tourism education in Romania – main features and patterns Andreea Diana PăşcuŃ and Mihaela Sofia Dinu customers in the hospitality industry. The National Tourism Abstract—The present study undertakes a detailed analysis of the Development Master Plan for 2007-2026 emphasizes as characteristics of the current supply of tourism studies in the priority the need to train the existing staff in hotels, boarding Romanian secondary education system. The purpose of the research houses, restaurants, etc. in terms of practical skills, foodstuff is to identify the main features and patterns of the hospitality and and beverage preparation and serving skills. Consequently, tourism education in Romania assuming that training represents an reorganizing and improving tourism education also becomes a essential factor in tourism development and in providing tourists with high quality services. Research has centred on detailed top priority, aimed at increasing competitiveness and documentation regarding the entire Romanian tourism employment productivity in tourism service provision [45]. sector, and also the education system of tourism degrees, followed by At a national and, frequently, international level, tourism a quantitative research based on intense online research and on education has evolved in a heterogeneous and ad hoc manner, processing in graphical representation the official statistics data with limited linkages to the real or perceived needs of the available. tourism industry [6]. So far, in Romania, no public authority has ordered or conducted any thorough research concerning Keywords—Hospitality, Labour market, Romania, Secondary the demand of specialised personnel on the labour market. In education, Tourism education. Romania, whether it is about tourism or another economic sector, up until now there are no concrete studies showing the I. INTRODUCTION domains that are lacking qualified workforce. After the fall of World Tourism Organization considers the “tourism the communism in 1989, there was no particular interest in education” subsystem as a crucial element in ensuring high monitoring the evolution of graduates number (higher and tourism satisfaction and in increasing the competitiveness of secondary education) in the field of tourism, in order to tourism businesses and areas. Thus the past few years have correlate the study programs offer with the labour market seen an increase in the number of trainees and students, as well demand. as the number of scientific studies on this topic [3], [39]. Trained staff for tourism activities is an essential factor in II. LITERATURE REVIEW tourism development and in providing tourists with high Tourism degree education came into being with the quality services. Only a properly educated workforce could be development of technical or vocational schools on the able to sustain the high level of friendly, efficient and European continent. These mainly focused on developing professional service. Consequently, the evolution of this sector specific skills in the areas of hospitality, accommodation and is directly correlated with the dynamics and structure of related businesses [28]. The need to train an ever-increasing qualified personnel [16], [41]. number of tourism specialists has led to a quickly rising Training represents a crucial component of successful demand of educational programs [12]. Although literature tourism and hospitality organisations, but it must be review hasn’t yielded precise information regarding the approached with caution: training objectives must be clearly development of the first tourism degrees, a number of authors articulated and action plans must be developed [35]. bring sufficient arguments in support of the fact that tourism Romania is currently facing countless difficulties in education originated in Europe and subsequently spread to developing and promoting tourism activities and services, and North America and Australia [22]. Its origins are uncertain, in this sense a decisive role is attributed to the structural issues varying from one author to the next; thus, Gillespie and Baum triggered by the shortage of qualified personnel, the low level (2001) place the first tourism degrees in the late 19th century; of service quality and the poor attitude to services and Jafari (1990) in 1930 and Majó (2004) in 1940. Tourism studies undergo a spectacular development in the second half th A. D. PăcuŃ is with the – Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest, of the 20 century, mainly related to the emergence of Fordist Bucharest, 010041 Romania (corresponding author to provide e-mail: or mass tourism [15]. [email protected]). The literature of tourism related education focuses on a M. S. Dinu is with Faculty of Domestic and International Economy pf number of basic topics: training needs (Sheldon and Gee, Tourism, Romanian-American University, Bucharest, 012101 Romania (e- mail: [email protected]). 1987; McCollKennedy and White, 1997; Formica and 141 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Issue 1, Volume 6, 2012 McCleary, 2000; Aktas et al., 2001; Beeton and Graetz, 2001; the world, which amounted to nearly 8% of the total active Agut and Grau, 2002); training incidence (Kelliher and population. Despite the economic recession of the last years, Johson, 1997; International Labour Organisation, 2001; this number has risen, insofar that the number of employees in Ramos et al., 2004); curriculum planning and evaluation tourism reached 259 million in 2011 (approx. 8.8% of the total (Formica, 1996; Airey and Johnson, 1999; Chung, 2000; Dale employees), while according to the WTTC, the number of and Robinson, 2001; Churchward and Riley, 2002; Collins, employees is likely to reach 313 million in 2021, which means 2002); evaluation of education and training activities (Hocutt that one out of 10.9 jobs will be generated by the tourism and Stone, 1998; Pizam, 1999; Jameson, 2000; Davies et al., industry [42]. By contrast with this global statistics, the 2001); distance education in tourism (Poon, 1988; Buhalis, situation differs significantly from one country to another, with 1998; Ozturna and Roney, 2004; Sahin and Balta, 2007; Afifi, the top countries in terms of tourism flows leading in terms of 2010) [35]. the great number of employees (France, Spain, USA, etc.). Statistic data regarding tourism employees in Romania are III. METHODOLOGY extremely limited; according to the NIS, approx. 125,000 The present study undertakes a detailed analysis of the people were employed in the “hotel and restaurants”(‘H-R’) characteristics of the current supply of tourism studies in the sector in 2009, which is less than 5% of the total population Romanian secondary education system, with special emphasis able to work [44]. The number of hotel and restaurant on the distribution of high schools with “tourism and employees has fluctuated since 1990, with a 63% decrease - hospitality” degrees over the Romanian territory, correlated from 213,000 in 1991 to approx. 79,000 employees in 2001 with the main areas of high tourism attraction, as well as on the [27]. Ever since then, the numbers have been on the rise, level of training of tourism degree high school graduates (by reaching 133,000 in the hospitality industry in 2004-2005, and calculating the graduation rate after the first baccalaureate respectively 162,000 in 2008. A significant decrease of the sitting in 2011 in the case of tourism gradates1). The main aim number of employees in ‘H-R’ industry was registered in 2009 is to identify feasible, precise solutions to equally support (about 125,000 employees), this decrease being mainly public institutions in the Romanian secondary education attributed to the critical economic situation of the country (see system and the labour market in this field. Fig 1). In the first part, research has centred on detailed documentation regarding the entire Romanian tourism employment sector, and also the education system of tourism degrees, with a review of specialized literature consisting of books, journals, newspapers, as well as a series of laws, government orders or reports. In the second part, the study was completed with quantitative research based on intense online research (websites, forums), on processing in graphical representation the official statistics data made available by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) and the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports (MERYS). The incompleteness of statistical information and data, however, made impossible a thorough quantitative research; mainly because of the fact that no public authority studied the tourism graduates insertion on the labour market after the `90s (‘H-R’ Fig. 1 Evolution of the ‘H-R’ employees number in Romania employment data are available up until 2009). To conclude, (1990-2009) detailed mapped representations have been used to summarize Data source: NIS, 2011 the data as efficiently as possible and to underline the state of facts in tourism secondary education. These figures refer to employees working in certified hotels and restaurants; yet the existence of a hitherto unquantifiable IV. TOURISM EMPLOYMENT IN ROMANIA – GENERAL number of hotels or other non-certified accommodation CHARACTERISTICS structures suggests that official statistics significantly According to the WTTC statistics, the number of underestimate the real number of tourism employees. individuals directly