Since the beginning of the lockdown in early 2020, we have experienced countless situations in various aspects of our lives. Some of the lessons learned during this time lead us to reflect on how quickly we have adopted different scenarios, moving from complicated to ‘everything is possible’.
At the announcement of the lockdown, we did not foresee such a prolonged absence from the classrooms, nor the almost emergency actions taken to continue the educational process from home. Despite how complex this situation may have been, the future outlook is far different from what many companies in the sector will face, whose partial closure of activities will make it impossible for them to reopen their doors.
For example, according to information from the National Chamber of the Restaurant and Seasoned Food Industry (in Mexico), of the 600,000 restaurants that closed due to the pandemic, 15% will not be able to reopen. We have a tourism sector that has been severely hit by the pandemic worldwide. In Mexico alone, tourism represents more than 8% of the gross domestic product. The recovery of jobs and, in general, economic reactivation is undoubtedly an issue that needs to be addressed.
In addition to the imminent economic consequences, the impact on the tourism sector also resulted in repercussions for the education sector; many educational institutions paused professional practices due to the closure of activities, almost entirely inhibiting the development of one of the main formative experiences in the educational process of tourism professionals.
Currently, students are practically unable to engage in international mobility due to migration restrictions. However, what initially may have seemed like a disadvantage is becoming a driving force for young people to immerse themselves in their local context and look at the needs of their community and closest surroundings, often overlooked in the pursuit of a more attractive or developed destination.
Today, classrooms are filled with Generation Z or centennial students born in the digital age with clear focuses on respect for diversity, learning from the internet in a self-taught manner, constantly connected to social networks, and thus obtaining quick responses; immediacy characterizes them, among many other traits.
The context of our students strongly pushes them to seek meaningful experiences that contribute to their professional training, raising some questions: Are we in higher education institutions shaping these profiles to meet their needs? Are we listening to students’ preferences regarding their areas of specialization? Do institutions have the capacity to invigorate engagement to respond to this generation? Do we have relationships with the most vulnerable business sectors to seek to strengthen them from academia? And lastly, are students interested in these types of businesses?
On one hand, we have an educational sector eager to generate meaningful training experiences for its students, resulting in the acquisition of relevant knowledge and skills for their professional field; on the other hand, we have a tourism sector experiencing an unprecedented situation, with more questions than answers about the future.
Beyond establishing protocols and safety and protection measures, which give us hope to continue and materialize in the design of public regulations and actions in homes, businesses, and schools, it is also necessary to seek ways to support the sector’s development as a whole.
One way to do this is the effective engagement of students to conduct professional practices in local organizations, particularly in complementary tourism service economic units that have structures showing greater susceptibility to the repercussions and impacts of the pandemic, such as micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).
A commitment of higher education institutions is to impact the context, so this method can become a strategy for generating joint participation, through a guild or individual approach to MSMEs, with support programs for organizational intervention projects that allow these companies to implement improvement actions promoting organizational learning through students advised by specialist academics.
The challenge is also to generate attractive, formal, measurable training programs in the productive sector that contribute to the systematization of their professional training according to their field of study, supporting economic reactivation from a local perspective.
Finally, we must reflect on the return to in-person classes, in a different world that requires our attentive presence, with active and dynamic participation that promotes short-term reaction for the benefit of tourism, from student training to their specialization as professionals.
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