In Sri Lanka, 20% of young people are unemployed and many find it difficult to secure work. The tourism industry offers the chance for a more positive future for young people by providing a wide variety of jobs.
The TUI Academy Sri Lanka provides education and practical training for vulnerable young people and opens the door to more opportunities and a career in tourism.
Through a mixture of practical training, job placements and soft skills training, TUI Academy Sri Lanka helps prepare students for employment in the tourism sector.
The first three-year phase of the project, in partnership with the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, combined classroom training at the TUI Academy in Ahungalla with hands-on experience to help young people aged 17-24 find work in Sri Lanka’s growing tourism sector. Participants received a two-month classroom-based training course on the basics of hospitality and soft skills delivered by Aitken Spence Hospitality School, followed by three months of practical training in hotels. In the framework of the project, 200 young people were trained in hospitality and soft skills, of which 155 graduated and 109 successfully gained employment. Among the graduates, 17 % were women, who are severely underrepresented in Sri Lanka's tourism workforce. A further 19 young people entered higher education or further upskilling programmes.
Despite the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s severe economic and political crisis, the programme expanded successfully, opening a second TUI Academy in Kandalama in 2023, to meet the growing demand from a reviving tourism industry for hospitality workers in Sri Lanka. During this phase, a total of 890 young people engaged in hospitality careers awareness activities, including hotel tours.
The project started its second three-year phase in February 2024, extending vocational skills training to an additional 250 young people, with a particular focus on the involvement of women. This second phase of the project further collaborates with Aitken Spence and the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management to introduce a soft skills curriculum into the existing courses and engages with the wider hospitality sector to bring more hotels into the programme. It means that the TUI Academy continues to benefit disadvantaged young people across Sri Lanka and offer opportunities for them to start a career in hospitality and tourism.
The TUI Academy Sri Lanka has been set up with the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance which brings together engaged hospitality companies and uses the collective power of the industry to deliver impact locally and on a global scale.
Working with leading hospitality companies and strategic partners to address key challenges affecting our planet and its people, they develop practical resources and programmes to enable the wider industry to operate responsibly and grow sustainably.
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