Staged Professional Training of Tourism Specialists in the Higher Education System in the Context of Social and Economic Crises

In the context of social and economic crises, the tourism industry represents the economic branch that is affected in various aspects, which implies the search for new solutions for development. Thus, the professional training of staff in the higher education system, including those in the field of tourism, in recent years was influenced by a series of factors that required rapid adaptation, the identification of the methods and means necessary to train the skills of future specialists. In this sense, the ever-changing requirements for employees in the tourism field, especially the trends of recent years, should focus on the content of the staged training of future employees in the tourism field, with an emphasis on the training of flexible, innovative and with deep digital skills to be able to deal with unpredictable situations that can affect the tourism sector. This fact implies that future graduates who will work in the tourism sector will need to possess skills that will allow them to quickly adapt to multiple tasks, in a redesigned industry that has been attempted by the pandemic. All this determines the need to make changes in the professional training of staff at each training stage, which will aim to ensure the sustainability of the sector, with an emphasis on strengthening the relations between academia and the industry itself in order to find viable solutions for development.