According to European Commission, 90% of businesses in the tourism sector are made up of primarily family run, small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) and they are often unable to attract and retain skilled employees and lack the capacity to develop specific education and training programmes for digital skills.
Besides, formal education and training institutions are generally late to adopt fast-changing new skills into their curriculum.
The end result is that SMTEs cannot fully exploit the opportunities offered by online market places and distribution channels, as well as new forms of marketing, namely digital marketing.
For this reason, European SMTEs need to keep up to date with the ITC developments and enhance the overall digital marketing and e-management skills through new educational and training programmes, new methods of learning/teaching and new occupations.