The knowledge supply is not structured to meet the needs of sector demand.
Tourism-knowledge generation and operation centres working with a piecemeal vision and little input of added value.
Talent and Entrepreneurship
The last of the pivotal factors corresponds to the encouragement of innovative management on the strength of talent and entrepreneurship. A crucial factor here is to ensure a proper level of training and incentives, enabling the sector to work in a more professional fashion.
Strengths:
Spain boasts a wide-ranging supply of university and occupational tourism training. Pride of place here goes to the online university research and training network through the University Network of Tourism Postgraduates (Red Universitaria de Postgrados en Turismo: REDINTUR), currently comprising 19 Spanish universities that offer postgraduate, master and doctorate syllabi in different fields of tourism.
Spain has top-ranking business schools worldwide: two business schools rank among the first 10 and a third 33rd worldwide (Financial Times, 2012); these are potential sources for attracting talent to the sector.
Weaknesses:
The tourism sector is not perceived as a prestigious sector to work in or do business with. It has a long-standing association with unskilled work, low wages and high rate of temporary employment contracts.
The training and research supply has not been properly tailored to meet the needs of the tourism sector.
Lack of hotel and restaurant-trade training institutions with a recognised international prestige.