HC Tourism. Profile and Trends of Human Capital in the Tourism Sector

Tourism is a strategic sector in Portugal since itgenerates employment and it is a factor of economic andsocial development. The tourism sector not only has anintensive need of labour force but also provides employ-ment opportunity to a range of qualifications. Being anindustry of people, it directly depends on the performanceof activities, skills, professionalism, quality and compet-itiveness. The main objective of this article is to presentthe HC Tourism project, which aims to seek and under-stand the needs of skills in tourism industry by study-ing the active companies that belong to the tourism eco-nomic subsectors, by region and subsector of economicactivity. The methodology used in this project is basedon a qualitative and quantitative approach, throughoutthe collection of primary and secondary data. The qual-itative approach was based on a literature review whichallowed to compile a list of 150 skills, divided under fourdomains: i) soft skills; ii) hard skills; iii) managementskills; iv) transversal skills. The quantitative approachreturned primary data, which were collected through anonline survey implemented and sent to national touristentrepreneurs, expecting to develop the ideal profile ofthe tourism human resources, based on a sample of 555answers.