PM4ESD: a new methodology, 100 people qualified
The T4EST – Training for European sustainable tourism project, financed by the life long learning programme of the European Union, organised its closing event on 19th of September in Brussels at the delegation of Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d’Azur region. NECSTOUR coordinated the event.
During one year, T4EST organised the training of over 100 people involved in management of tourism projects to a a new certified method called Project management for European sustainable development or “PM4ESD“. Based on a project management method renown in the UK called PRINCE2 (Projects In Controlled Environments), the method aims at ensuring the qualitative and impact oriented design and implementation of tourism projects.
The idea is to guarantee that these projects will reach real sustainable development goals in economic, environmental and social terms, in other words that they will impact positively the local economy and environment. The methodology defines steps to be taken so that projects are transformed into concrete actions with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and to anticipate, characterise and measure benefits.
Concretely, how can you benefit from this new methodology or get qualified?
FEST, the Foundation for Sustainable European Tourism created in continuity with PM4SD and T4EST will now propose training sessions to the new methodology.
- visit FEST website here from october 2013 onwards to look at the planning of qualitification sessions.
- download the manual from FEST website.
Evaluate the impact of tourism practices: a competence to improve
The conference was also the occasion to discuss how to measure the real impact of tourism practices and projects. Mike Coyne from the Centre for strategy and evaluation studies presented a recently compiled study evaluating the real impact of 20 tourism good practices. The report should be available soon on DG Entreprise website and would bring a lot of added value to future mountain tourism projects.
A global partnership for sustainable tourism
There was also an intervention from the Global partnership for sustainable tourism by Deirdre Shurland, its UNEP based coordinator, presenting what this partnership ( a sort of counter part of the MOuntain partnership but for Tourism) is doing to ensure a shift towards more sustainable tourism practices at global level. Their core actions include provision of screening and evaluation tools for tourism projects (available to the membership members only so far), technical assistance through workshops, advocacy and fundraising and networking activities.
ETIS: 67 indicators to measure the performance of tourism destinations
Finally DG Entreprise presented the European Tourism Indicator System ETIS, which has been launched on February 22nd, 2013. ETIS is a system of 27 core indicators, completed by 40 optional indicators which aim to measure, assess performance and benchmark on 4 topics:
- destination management
- economic value
- social and cultural impact
- environmental impact
The system is currently in a first pilot phase where it is tested by 100 destinations and which will lead to a second phase starting in 2014. Guidelines and a toolkit are readily available on DG Entreprise website.
ETIS and PM4SD are closely related as the approach to tourism, to measurement and to assessment of performance are similar. PM4SD provides a management method but no indicators and ETIS proposes and indicator system.
When asked, the European Commission clarified that there was no intention to make one or the other method/system compulsory to use for future EU-funded projects. However, their increasing use could lead to considering as marks of quality.
European tourism policy moves forward
This conference was a good occasion to witness the progress made towards a European tourism policy. The voluntary benchmarking indicator system that Euromontana had called for in its policy recommendations from Inverness is now well underway. Tools and methods for skills improvements are being proposed.
Beyong PM4ESD, the European Commission DG Entreprise is also working on a variety of initiatives aiming at improving skills in the tourism sector and at facilitating mobility of people working in the tourism sector. A European skills passport has in particular been developed to help citizens characterize their skills and certify them more easily abroad. The skills have been characterised for the hospitality sector and are being developed for cultural tourism and adventure tourism. This should be finished by March 2014. If you are interested you can monitor the EURES and European Skills passport webpages.
DG Entreprise Tourism and Cultural instruments (E2) unit is further investigating now the performance of the educational system regarding tourism in the EU. A call is open that should lead to the selection of a contractor in the coming weeks.
Other interesting initiative concern tourism accessibility and business ICT and tourism initiative.
20 September 2013
