Northern Ireland

The hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector in Northern Ireland employs a workforce of 43,900 - 2% of the total UK sector workforce.

Recent years have seen significant growth and investment in the sector. In 2007, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board reported that there had been 2.11m visitors to Northern Ireland, an increase of 6% on the previous year with tourism contributing £510m to the NI economy.

The recent Programme for Government targets aim to increase tourism revenue by 40% and visitor numbers by 25%.

‘Project Spinnaker' – Sector Skills Agreement for Northern Ireland

On the back of large scale research People 1st undertook in 2006, ‘Project Spinnaker' - a Skills Strategy was developed to tackle the skills and labour market priorities across the sector.

The strategy centres on a ten point plan which addresses four priorities:

• Management and leadership
• Customer service
• Chef skills
• Retention

The strategy sets out how these issues can be tackled through partnership between sector employers and government. Its progress is overseen by an employer group led by Howard Hastings, MD of Hastings Hotels.

The Sector Skills Agreement for Northern Ireland and a summary of Project Spinnaker can be downloaded from the ‘key documents' menu on the right hand side of this page.

Review of Qualifications

A critical part of the strategy is ensuring that the qualifications made available to the sector meet the needs of employers. Throughout 2007, People 1st consulted employers and partners to understand those needs and have set out an ambitious strategy and roll out programme for qualification development in Northern Ireland that aims to:

• Rationalise existing provision
• Ensure qualifications are reinforcing coherent development pathways
• Provide bite-sized, flexible delivery

The Sector Qualification Strategy and its Northern Ireland Action Plan can be found under the ‘Qualification Reform' section of the website.