The key soft skills of tourism professionals for PostCOVID

In the last of the articles of the Innova Institute de La Salle-URL, in which we are reflecting on the effects of COVID-19 in today's society, we analyzed the hard skills required by professionals in the tourism sector, to increase companies competitiveness. The current situation, derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, has triggered a different way of living business activities and at the same time has stimulated, among others, the development of emotional management skills.

In this study, researchers at the Innova Institute have analyzed what skills a tourism professional needs to master to successfully exit the current crisis and blockade situation in which the tourism sector is mired and to confidently face the return to normality of economic activity in the sector. In this new environment, concepts such as the carrying capacity of a resource —that is, the number of people that can be in a monument or restaurant at a time— will become a factor that will generate controversy and possible conflicts of coexistence. The criteria will go from being architectural or experiential to being healthy. Tourism professionals will have to face these kinds of new challenges.

The skills that have been analyzed in this article are the so-called soft or soft skills, which are a combination of skills and personality traits that empower professionals to function in the environment with other people and achieve their goals, thus complementing the hard skills.

1. Emotional intelligence

This ability can be considered as the basis of soft abilities since it influences all of them. It consists of knowing how to understand and manage one's emotions or, at least, not reacting incongruously, which negatively affects both oneself and other people. Professionals who make good use of this skill generate high performance from their emotional and rational capacities. They are closely connected with the idea of ​​responsibility, associated with the ability to give adequate responses to the various situations that arise in everyday life.

2. Communicative skills

Communication is a set of linguistic processes that develop throughout a person's life, in order to participate efficiently and skillfully in all spheres of communication and human society. Basically, these skills are active listening, empathy, emotional validation, nonverbal and verbal language, negotiation, reading and writing, and, finally, respect. In this context, the tourism professional must have the ability to deliver or receive information effectively and efficiently, so as to satisfy the understanding of the message. In addition, this communication capacity must be effective, seeking to achieve the desired objective. In COVID-19 times, communication through different digital tools has forced executives in the tourism sector to develop and enhance their skills in non-verbal communication. For example, in the intonation and modulation of the voice, in the use of symbols that represent emotions (emojis) and in greater care when writing and interpreting messages, for good management of time and team.

3. Conflict resolution

It is the set of knowledge and skills that are put into practice to understand and intervene in the peaceful, non-violent resolution of confrontations between two or more people. For this, it is important to have empathy, identify the nature of the conflicts to understand them and seek a better solution, with the purpose of keeping a customer satisfied with the service. Although it was always a necessary skill, it becomes more relevant in this digital age, since the client can easily spread, and with more scope, negative opinions about conflicts that he perceived to have been poorly resolved through social networks and digital platforms.

4. Leadership

It is the set of skills with which an individual influences the way of being or acting of the people of a workgroup so that the team works with enthusiasm towards the achievement of its goals. This skill also involves delegating, taking the initiative, and motivating. Leadership in the PostCOVID era will also undergo changes, it will be based on neuro-leadership, in the figure of a leader who is aware of himself and his own, who achieves that his employees perform within their work, that brings out the excellence of each. If the companies in the tourism sector begin to evolve their people, they will be considered conscious companies where the essential values ​​are impeccable coordination, ontological humility, emotional management, and constructive negotiation. This type of leadership comes within the trend of change from the old B2B (business to business) to H2H (human to human), in which relationships have to be closer and more humane.

5. Adaptability

This is perhaps one of the most developed soft skills in the period of the pandemic. In this case, it refers to the ability of workers to adapt globally: to the company, the task, and the work environment. Changing working conditions — in some unfavorable cases — demand that the tourism sector professional is able to develop this skill. Similarly, the professional must also promote the adaptation of business models, adjusting to new ways of connecting clients, obtaining data and information, linking the appropriate use of technological tools that were promoted during isolation. The PostCOVID era will force face-to-face offers in the sector to adapt their spaces to "the new normal", with the predetermined distances between users and clients within establishments that are required.

6. Ethical work

Work ethic is the belief that hard and diligent work has a moral benefit and an inherent ability or virtue to strengthen character. Ethics prioritizes work and places it at the center of individual and social life. Some of its characteristics are being a worker and having the will to add, as well as being loyal, having initiative and motivation. Other related issues are punctuality and unjustified non-absenteeism.

7. Time management

Knowing how to distinguish what is important from what is urgent, managing stress in the face of the many tasks that we have pending and the ability to complete every day every task assigned are skills that are required not only in tourism but in all business sectors. The current environment forces professionals in the sector to perform multiple tasks at once, and this carries its dangers. The main one is procrastination; that is, leaving a task for later or finding any excuse to do anything else instead of doing what is really important. Knowing how to fight procrastination is a necessary skill to face the current environment.

8. Teamwork

Teamwork combines the skills of all members of the organization, enhancing their efforts, reducing the time invested in tasks, and increasing the effectiveness of the results. Knowing how to dialogue in a non-face-to-face environment and having the ability to create new projects together with others is important in the semi-virtual world that will follow COVID-19, both in tourism and in other business sectors.

9. Sensitivity towards project sustainability

The tourism of the future, and also that of the present, must be sustainable or it will not be. A clear long-term orientation, non-speculation, respect for cultures, diversity, and protection of the environment are necessary for every good professional in the tourism industry. This requires sensitivity, which should be a skill to be taken into account by professionals in the sector.

10. Creativity

Creativity involves recognizing opportunities in which the professional's imagination allows him to make proposals and create alternatives that others have not identified. Faced with the challenges facing the sector, ideas such as the virtualization of processes - in terms of offering experiences of contact with other cultures - or including gastronomic, cultural, sports and other activities in line with the client's wishes and opportunities provided by the environment, allow adding value to the proposals and are decisive for the growth of the initiatives. Likewise, adjusting the creative proposal to respond to temporary needs is evidence of the ability to unite aspects that can be complementary, and this provides a difference for the development of the sector. For example, and related to the context, the accommodation of medical personnel, or the provision of facilities for infected or quarantined persons.

11. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to perceive, feel, and understand another person's point of view while giving an active interest in their concerns or problems. This ability allows professionals to create a connection of trust with their clients, by making them feel understood, and indirectly that trust positively influences their decisions. A guest who feels that their comments are heard, or their preferences met, will be more likely to choose one alternative over others and to stay or return to a place that generates a feeling of understanding and true understanding.

12. Critical thinking

This ability is characteristic of people who question what they see and what they analyze, those who strive to understand effectively what is happening around them. This ability provides a global vision and facilitates the best management of the information received since the individual is able to understand and assimilate the content in a more agile and efficient way.

13. Social sensitivity

It is the ability of an individual to identify, perceive, and understand the signals and contexts in social interactions. In turn, it is the ability to choose the behavior that best suits the situation and the people involved. Each individual faces different problems and reacts differently to similar problems. Therefore, being sensitive to these situations generates a better quality of service and greater customer satisfaction. Being sensitive to the cultural factors that condition people's behaviors, generating close relationships despite their own cultural differences, can be an example; or have patience with older people with the handling of technology.

14. Learning capacity

The constant technological changes, and the new social and environmental requirements, involve professionals developing skills to analyze situations according to their criteria, search for relevant information and solve problems autonomously to make decisions that allow them to adapt their business proposal to those new requirements, and thus improve its operation. This process implies responsibility for what has been learned, so before acting, you must analyze the correct way of operating, monitor activities, and evaluate the results to promote this learning to the organization.

Soft skills complement hard skills and are transversal skills required to carry out an activity. After analyzing soft skills such as adaptability, empathy, or leadership, among others, the Innova Institute of La Salle-URL detects the need for professionals in the tourism sector to develop these skills, so that their companies can compete and maintain themselves on the market in today's changing environment.