About SkillsOnBoard
‘SkillsOnBoard - Soft skills for professional skippers in a changing tourism industry’ is a European project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission. It is a project for professional yacht skippers with the aim to help them acquire or develop soft skills that will add to the quality of their services, responding to new trends in tourism on the demand side. Central to these new trends are the expectations of the tourists for experience-rich memories, and the gradual abandonment of mass tourism models. In order for professionals in the tourism sector to respond to these new trends, there is a set of soft skills and abilities that should be developed or further enhanced, relating to personal and social competences, complementing job-specific skills. SkillsOnBoard is in particular developing educational material available in an online learning space in 5 languages (English, Greek, Bulgarian, Croatian, Spanish), looking into two broad subjects:
- Understanding how the new trends in tourism on the demand side are shaping the touristic services on the supply side
- Acquisition or development of certain soft skills and attitudes for professional skippers, responding to these trends (for example communication skills, leadership skills in managing the on- board community, conflict management skills, group dynamics etc.)
The SkillsOnBoard training provision will include innovative, attractive, easy to follow training material, supported by visual elements, case studies, tests and assessment exercises, either for dedicated self-study or as an on-demand pool of tips and practices, that can offer knowledge on the spot. The online training is freely accessible in English, Greek, Bulgarian, Croatian, and Spanish. When fully developed, it will be pilot-tested by professional skippers to check the relevance and usefulness of the training content as a whole and within different subjects, the user-friendliness of the training provision in technical terms, as well as to provide feedback for changes and optimisation. SkillsOnBoard is running from late 2017 and up to September 2019.
*All training material will be soon available in the menu Online training.
Target groups: Who will benefit?
The primary target group of the project are the professional skippers and crew in:
- skippered yacht charters (rented boat and services of a skipper by tourists);
- crewed yacht charter (rented boat, services of a skipper and crew e.g. cook, deckhands by tourists);
- flotilla yachting (company of boats managed by a skipper in a skippered yacht).
Secondary target groups are indicatively as follows:
- Yacht charting and touristic agencies;
- Skipper and yacht training centres, Academies, schools etc. (post-secondary, non-tertiary, tertiary);
- VET schools and organisations providing vocational training in maritime and touristic professions;
- Institutional and regulatory bodies in tourism and maritime leisure in particular.
Who is ‘navigating’ SkillsOnBoard
Skills on Board brings together 8 partners from 4 EU countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Spain), 6 in the Mediterranean and 2 in the Black Sea. The project is coordinated by BCA College in Greece. The partnership combines expertise in professional skills development with expertise in maritime and tourism issues. See the SkillsOnBoard partners profiles in the menu Partners.
