VisitPortugal operates a dozen specialty Tourism Schools in Portugal, training new professionals in cooking, pastry-making, restaurant and beverages, nature and adventure tourism, cultural and heritage tourism, hospitality/hotels, and tourism management.
Each offers a comprehensive training program, focusing on new talent, soft skills development, innovation, and worldliness of tourism professionals, to the benefit of Portugal’s tourism industry. The Tourism Schools are now accepting online applications until July 15, free of charge for both Portuguese and international students.
Given the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the network of 12 tourism schools has made major changes to the organization and training methodology. The schools have created a series of online learning innovations for the next school year. 2020/2021’s school projects will be virtual, with a focus on online support from teachers, including study support, personal and creative development.
All technological specialization courses will have an online teaching mode, covering 15% to 20% of the theoretical curriculum. Training programs will also be initiated on an e-learning and b-learning basis, including an unprecedented wine tasting course scheduled for July.
The combination of online training and face-to-face teaching, while reducing the physical time needed in school classrooms, is also intended to reinforce its appeal to international students.
The internationalization of the training continues to be a major focus of the schools over the next school year, through international cooperation with other schools and trainers in the development of online projects and online complementary training.
In addition to the changes in the way student will be trained, these have been accompanied by a training plan for school teams and the training of teachers, ensuring their development of new digital skills, and new methods and strategies for online distance-learning.
VisitPortugal’s schools network teaches more than three thousand students annually and has been become a pillar of the national tourist authority’s activities, contributing to the service quality and competitiveness of the tourism sector’s employee teams.
