Searching for Strengths: Gaps and Opportunities for Social and Emotional Skills Development in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector

The pandemic hit the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector especially hard—in Canada, the sector unemployment rate reached 18.6 per cent in January 2021. Helping displaced T&H workers find new and meaningful employment is crucial to both the people directly affected and the broader economic recovery. Strong social and emotional skills (SES) can improve a person’s ability to transition between roles. Understanding the prevalence of these skills among T&H workers is important to highlight opportunities for career transitions both within and outside the industry. It may also support retraining programs.

Building on our previous research, this briefing identifies SES gaps and strengths across occupations in the T&H industry to be able to help displaced workers transition to new roles. Key areas of focus include mapping the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics’ O*Net framework to T&H occupations and analyzing subsector groupings. We also suggest next steps that could help the T&H sector minimize the gaps in SES.