Secretary of State points to the need to qualify human resources in tourism, warning that the sector needs higher salaries to attract and retain talent.

Portugal needs "to raise the qualifications of human resources in the area of Tourism a lot.

This is said by the Secretary of State for Tourism, Nuno Fazenda, who carried out the knowledge operation yesterday as part of the 1st UCP Academic Day, held at the Regional Center of Braga.

The member of the Government stressed that people are the main asset of tourism. "We can have the best hotels, the best destinations, but in the end, what counts are the people who know how to welcome", said Nuno Fazer, pointing out the Achilles' heel of the sector in Portugal: "we have to improve the sector's human resources in terms of qualifications and that's what we're working towards".

"We have been working in vocational education, where we have a network of schools of excellence in the country and we also have higher education with great recognition in the area of tourism" he pointed out.

It was with the aim of attracting talent to the Tourism sector that the Government recently launched an Agenda for Tourism Professions, recalled Nuno Fazer. This is a strategic agenda, made up of 20 measures to "grow in qualifications, in the attractiveness of professions and in the number of professionals" in tourism.

The Secretary of State also highlighted the importance of increasing salaries in the sector, which despite the improvements still pays below other sectors. He recalled that the new income agreement has already made it possible to increase wages by 5.1%, with "some hotel groups applying increases even greater than this amount". The Secretary of State warned that having higher salaries is "the only way to retain and attract talent to companies", the same happening in companies linked to tourism.

The minister also praised the UCP's commitment to provide specialized training in the area, recalling that he himself was a professor at the institution and was at the foundation of the Tourism course. He revealed, moreover, that participating in this session was "a return home" and that "There is no development without knowledge and it is with houses like the UCP that we will be able to advance because only with more knowledge and more qualified human resources can we have a more developed economy and, in the case of tourism, more sustainable, more inclusive and more productive tourism', concluded Nuno Fazenda.

Note:

To promote unity in the academic community, Catholic institutes Academic Day

Yesterday, the Braga Regional Center celebrated the UCP Academic Day for the first time. João Duque explained that "the institution of this academic day has, as its first function, to encourage knowledge and rapprochement between students of the various courses, helping to promote a transdisciplinarity that is essential today in academia and in working life".