- Assessment of industry employment and training needs
- Training and study events for local tourism counterparts and stakeholders
- Facilitation of tourism professional education
- Specialized tourism industry contests
- Educational and training resources
- Dissemination of best practices
- Industry partnership and networking events
- Carpathian Culinary Heritage Network
At present over 500,000 people are employed in the hospitality, recreation, travel and tourism industry sectors in the Europe’s Carpathian area with over 30,000 employed in the Ivano-Frankivsk Region of Ukraine. The tourism industry undergoes the rapid and dynamic development and growth, prompting tense market competition. Therefore, we try to build and promote a strong region’s identity as a holiday destination creating added value and new sales opportunities for local tourism operators and related actors.
Through customized consultations, trainings and other activities, we try to share our experience and provide local tourism market players with practical skills and knowledge necessary to effectively exploit available resources and area’s potential as a tourist destination, opportunities for business development, responding to competition challenges and career growth.
- Marketing in the Travel and Tourism Industry – a training course dealing with the peculiarities of positioning and promoting a tourism product/destination, consumption in tourism, the issue of distribution of market roles and niches, organization of sales and sales channels, familiarizing with classic and innovative marketing strategies and tools, the basics of event management and market research. The syllabus is adapted for tourist guides and hotel staff, owners of ‘green’ rural homes, travel agents and destination organizers (representatives of local authorities and trade organizations).
- Golden Service – a training course dealing with the basics of sales in the tourism industry, service standards, the aspects of handling requests and complaints, communication and nonverbal intercourse techniques, the issue of servicing clients with special needs, conflict management and the corresponding skills.
The most popular training activities we offer are our ‘haute-couture’ programs, that is, training courses specially designed and adapted for specific audiences according to their wishes and needs on the basis of an individual tailor made approach. To cover various topics of interest, we often attract to our training courses and consultations professional lectors and trainers well-known in Ukraine and abroad.
In addition to our training courses, we organize familiarization / study visits for people to explore best practices and experiences in the travel and tourism industry. For this purpose, we cooperate with our partners – organizations with similar functions from Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Finland, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, France and Greece.
Our clients are both beginners in the tourism sector and experienced entrepreneurs, trade organizations and local development institutions, operators of local tourist attractions, representatives of local authorities and public organizations and other stakeholders interested in the development of tourism.
We also conduct a wide range of research activities including labor market research, elaboration of guidance resources to businesses in tourism sector as well as activities in terms of capacity building and improvement of professional skills.
Besides, we develop manuals and training materials as reference and guidelines for actions in order to help put into practice the specific knowledge and skills acquired while on training.
Numerous events organized by us for tourism market participants – forums, meetings, round tables, etc. – provide a platform for the exchange of experience, search for colleagues and partners, establishment of business contacts, discussion and elaboration of joint vision towards the issues of common interest and finding solutions.
In 2012 Tourist Association of Ivano-Frankivsk region founded the Carpathian Culinary Heritage Network aimed at conservation and popularization of the role and range of the different traditional Carpathian food products and cuisines as a catalyst for sustainable regional development and preservation of local cultural heritage. The Network covers the Carpathian regions of Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Slovakia, serving as a platform for effective cooperation between the network participants and promoting the traditional culinary heritage on national and international consumer markets. The network participants take part in various training courses and business support programs, position and promote their products and services within Carpathian Culinary Heritage Trail, are entitled to display network’s sign and logo to position themselves as network participant as well as use other network’s resources, gaining real advantages from partnership and additional opportunities for their businesses development.