The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Tourism, Vice Minister of Tourism, Princess Haifa Mohammed Al Saud, has launched a comprehensive institutional accreditation initiative aiming to elevate the standard of education and training in the tourism sector.
Focus will be placed on boosting the effectiveness of educational programs and aligning them more closely with the needs of the labor market in the Kingdom’s tourism sector, said the release.
Princess Haifa said that the launch of this initiative is an important step toward ensuring the success of the ministry’s efforts.
She added that the initiative, the largest in the world, involves assessing the quality of 102 national tourism education and training programs throughout 2024. The assessment, which will measure the quality of tourism programs, will be conducted by three organizations: UN Tourism, the Education and Training Evaluation Commission, and the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation.
The initiative aims to enable tourism education and training institutions supported by the Ministry of Tourism to earn international and local accreditations and professional certificates.
The vice minister stressed that the initiative aims to achieve several goals.
These goals are both short and long term and include having 31 tourism education and training programs and institutions obtain national and international accreditation in 2024; enabling 200 trainers, and educational and administrative staff, to acquire professional certificates to teach tourism programs developed by the ministry in collaboration with the United Nations World Tourism Organization for 2024; ensuring that 37 Ministry of Tourism employees acquire a professional certificate to manage tourism programs; and having 27 tourism education and training programs and institutions obtain international and local accreditation in 2025.
The vice minister said: “We are collaborating closely with our local and international partners to fulfill the objectives of this promising initiative. This effort will raise the competitiveness of the tourism labor market, enhance the Kingdom’s status as a premier global tourism destination, develop the skills of industry workers, and present them with exceptional job opportunities.”
The ministry noted that in June 2024, under the “Ahluha” initiative, it initiated the Tourism National Occupational Skills Standards in the tourism sector, in both Arabic and English. It marked the first national effort to establish specialized professional standards to improve the quality of tourism education and training outcomes and bridge the gap between supply and demand in the field.
