BEST BY DOING: Ho.Re.Ca. skills development in Wellness Facilities Erasmus Project

Project Title

BEST BY DOING: Ho.Re.Ca. skills development in Wellness Facilities

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition, transparency, certification; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Health and Wellness Tourism is growing at a much faster rate than the overall tourism. It is a new sector that requires special expertise and high quality, especially in HORECA services (e.g. healthy eating and nutrition). BEST BY DOING aims to spread the criterion of excellence on VET training, developing a new environment for supporting VET learners of the upper-secondary level to access to the opportunities of a superior experience of WBL abroad, to let them gain the right skills for their future jobs in health and wellness hospitality.
BBD answers to the EU2020 priority: promoting WBL in all its forms by favouring the European mobility of VET learners, providing them with specific skills required by wellness tourism sector in order to produce concrete results on the ground. BBD develops a smart ICT environment, introducing a systematic approach and opportunities for initial and continuous professional development, stimulating cooperation among VET institutions (schools), business sector (companies involved in wellness and hospitality industry), learners and social partners. The project born from the lack of work-based experience and the related skills as one of the factors contributing to the “skills gap” in the EU today and as declared by the “Strategic Plan 2016-2017” of EQUAVET, mobility for learners, teachers and trainers should be gradually expanded with a view to making WBL abroad the rule rather than the exception.
Partnership is composed by 6 partner coming from Hungary (Termál Egészségipari Klaszter Egyesület formed by 47 members- SMEs, firms, service providing companies), Italy (Regional Trade Association: Confesercenti Regionale Del Veneto; GEIE: Marco Polo G.E.I.E. and VET School: Fondazione Lepido Rocco), Spain (SME- ICT and training developer: Senior Europa Sociedad Limitada) and Slovenia (Economic Institute-development and training: Ekonomske Raziskave In Podjetnistvo D.O.O.). Partnership has specific expertise in the field of WBL VET training, mobility enhancing and ICT solution development, dissemination and exploitation capacity.
The project starting point is the analysis of innovative existent and assessed solutions for the creation of “Triple-Match Technology” for wellness facilities (O1), the system that facilitates VET main stakeholders involved in WBL to easily communicate. “HO.RE.CA. Wellness High Quality Training” (O2) is a learning path that aim to certificate specific skills acquired during training. Partnership works on a smart repository for the storage and development of smart training material for WBL and mobility preparation (WBL box-O3). A specific pedagogic approach fitting with project outcomes is proposed and tested, together with all project output functionalities and effectiveness.
Main aims of the project are: (1) Developing an innovative online ICT toolbox (WBL box), a Platform to connect VET students, VET institutions and VET Centres in order to increase the mobility of VET learners and provide skilled trainees for companies from another countries. The Platform supports learners to reach reliable companies, while they learn about the host companies and their needs. (2) Improving cooperation between VET schools, companies and VET students through WBL to develop lessons based on real needs. (3) Raise awareness about the importance of VET mobility on stakeholders. (4) Ensure validation of non-formal learning in wellness tourism sector, through smart certification of the training performed.
The main project results is the online WBL box (www-bestbydoing.com) including 10 language lessons in different areas, and lessons about soft skills. The structure of it is the following:
1. General Expressions: general expressions and vocabulary
2. Hotel 1: typical and important sentences, expressions and situations needed by a receptionist
3. Hotel 2: it helps to get closer to the housekeeping tasks
4. Restaurant, hospitality: a lot of expressions in different situations in a restaurant
5. Kitchen, kitchen technology: useful expressions in kitchen, and it gives a recipe of a specialty of the partner countries of the project
6. SPA and wellness: saunas, massages, body- and facial treatments, fitness possibilities are described
7. Medical treatments 1: it presents the world of spas
8. Medical treatments 2: expressions regarding body parts, diseases, and basic medical treatments
9. Other hotel services: different situations relating to other hotel services
10. Other important expressions: useful expressions that can help a more personal, more casual communication are explained.
Soft skills lessons:
1. Introduction
2. Teamwork
3. Communication
4. Problem solving
All the courses are integrated are structured, as the learning pathways, in peer languages: Spanish–Italian, Spanish–Slovenian, Spanish–Hungarian, Italian-Spanish, Italian–Slovenian, Italian–Hungarian, Slovenian–Spanish, Slovenian–Italian, Slovenian–Hungarian, Hungarian–Spanish, Hungarian–Italian and Hungarian–Slovenian.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 205374,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Termál-Egészségipari Klaszter Egyesület & Country: HU

Project Partners

• CONFESERCENTI REGIONALE DEL VENETO
• FONDAZIONE LEPIDO ROCCO
• EKONOMSKI INSTITUT MARIBOR, EKONOMSKE RAZISKAVE IN PODJETNISTVO D.O.O.
• SENIOR EUROPA SOCIEDAD LIMITADA
• MARCO POLO G.E.I.E.