Scotland

There are approximately 18,000 hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism businesses across Scotland.

The Scottish sector employs a workforce of 183,500 - 10% of the total UK sector workforce - and 77 per cent of businesses employ fewer than ten people.

Sector Skills Agreement for Scotland

On the back of large scale research People 1st undertook in 2006, which consulted over 850 Scottish employers, a Sector Skills Agreement was developed to tackle the skills and labour market priorities across the sector.

The agreement 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.

The Sector Skills Agreement for Scotland 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 Scotland that aims to:

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

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