Minister Angelkova: We support the Bulgarian children, who have chosen to become professionals in their country’s tourism

20 March 2018

The staff training centre will start operation as a pilot project in Sofia with the efforts of the Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Education

We congratulate you and support you for choosing such important and demanding specialties for your vocational training. They are crucial to the sustainable development of Bulgarian tourism and the quality of the services marketed. This was stated by the Minister of Tourism, Nikolina Angelkova, in Velingrad during her meeting with pupils and teachers from the Aleko Konstantinov Vocational Secondary School of Economy and Tourism. She emphasized that the image of our country as a year-round destination largely depends on the highly skilled teams, which is particularly true for the town – the spa capital of the Balkans.

The Minister pointed out that the lack of sufficient well-trained staff is tourism is one of the major issues but is a challenge that we need to tackle with joint efforts. The record-breaking growths reported by Bulgarian tourism over the two most recent years mean a lot more efforts in welcoming and servicing our guests, therefore, it is very important to make the link between businesses and education an effective one, said Nikolina Angelkova. She announced that using the example of Spain, Italy, and other countries, the institution is planning to set up a Tourism Staff Training and Retraining Centre jointly with the Ministry of Education and Science. We have support and expect to start the pilot project in Sofia next year. Should it progress successfully, we will also open up branches in the country, she added.

We can also support the sector via the short-term option of recruiting seasonal workers from third countries, which we have been applying since last year, but it matters to us that Bulgarian can have a career in their own country. We set up the Interdepartmental Council for Tourism Staff in order to resolve these issues in a coordinated manner. We also have a scheduled meeting with the Association of Vocational Secondary Schools and we want to cooperate with it as well and achieve tangible results, the minister announced further.

The Vocational Secondary School of Economy and Tourism in Velingrad is among the most up-to-date and preferred ones in the country to have such profile. Future staff are trained here after grades 7 and 8, following secondary education, and on part-time basis. Significant care is also paid to hands-on training – the school has three workshops for cooks and confectioners. There is a serving room, as well as workshops for snacks and confectionery, which are sold both in the school and outside. A state-of-the art workshop for cookery is set up with European standards, under the Bulgarian-Austrian TOUR-NET project. Apart from cooks, waiters, bakers, and confectioners, hoteliers, accountants, and managers for the catering establishments are also trained here. Classes with intensive teaching of English and German have been opened up under the Bulgarian-Austrian BAK-TOURMAN project. One of the three multimedia computer rooms is a training desk with embedded hotel management software.

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