T-STAR

Background

Tourism for long time has been recognised, as having great potential for contributing to the country's economy - and helping to reduce poverty, which is rife in the remote rural regions. For this reason, it has been declared a priority area for government policy: 2001 was declared the "Year for the Support and Development of Tourism" and following the "Tulip Revolution" in 2005, the new government declared tourism to be a government priority for economic development.
Tourism and specifically the development of the hospitality sector is one of the main priorities of the Kyrgyz Government within the Country Development Framework. Recreational and business tourism contribute increasingly to the rural and urban development; especially in the Ysskkol region. However, one of the few main challenges for further tourism development is the low skills level of the employees in hotels and restaurants which makes it for Kyrgyzstan increasingly difficult to compete on the international and regional tourism markets and what limits (if not threatens) the income opportunities for the rural population in the main tourism regions. Although the universities in Kyrgyzstan offer ample education and training opportunities for the management level, there are hardly any and mostly not labour market-relevant training offers if looking at the level of the technical employees (service, kitchen, housekeeping, etc.)

T-STAR

In 2008, Helvetas, Swiss Association for International Cooperation, decided to launch under its overall Skills Training in rural AReas (STAR) project a new component called Tourism Skills Training in rural AReas (T-STAR) which is funded by the Liechtenstein Development Service (LED) and backstopped by Swiss Hotel Association, hotelleriesuisse.

Project Objectives

The overall objective of T-STAR is to contribute to the widening of provision of improved opportunities in employment for employed and unemployed rural and semi-urban adults through the facilitation of the development of sustainable training delivery mechanisms for labour market oriented skills development in the hotel and restaurant sector of the recreational and business tourism industry in the Kyrgyz Republic. T-STAR strives to facilitate the private sector to coordinate and contribute to the development of new short training offers for employees and jobseekers in the hospitality sector. To this end, T-STAR will mobilise selected key hotels, training providers and the Chamber of Commerce to develop and implement a first trial course in a training hotel in 2009. This inception phase will allow to collect experiences on the basis of which the setting up of sustainable training delivery mechanisms with the main stakeholders in the hospitality sector shall be discussed and agreed as a preparation for a potential first phase (2010-12) of the T-STAR project.

T-STAR in brief

Project duration (inception phase): 2009-2010.

Donor: Liechtenstein Development Service (LED)

Implementing agency: Helvetas - Swiss Association for International Cooperation

Partner: Swiss Hotel Association (Hotelleriesuisse)