Visitor Economy Skills & Business Support Audit

The West Midlands is proud to have been accredited as one of two national pilot Destination Development Partnerships (DDP). This enables two or more Local Visitor Economy Partnerships to work together to offer regional and locally appropriate solutions to national and regional policy and industry priorities. Our West Midlands DDP workplan includes support for Visitor Economy skills development. In order to achieve this, we need to identify the range of skills that are required by the industry and the gaps in the region's talent. • This supports the West Midlands' Mayoral regional strategy of 'jobs for everyone' • It is a key part of rebuilding the region's visitor economy resilience, having lost talent through COVID furloughs and redundancies. • We need the best talent pool through current economic instability We require a supplier to assess, through primary and secondary research, the skills requirements and gaps in the visitor economy sector in the West Midlands. We not only want to understand the demand-side better i.e. to identify the skills that employers need from current or future employees, which are currently missing, but also the supply-side barriers - so what employers need to improve in their offer to ensure that disabled workers, or those returning to work after a break are facilitated into the jobs that need to be filled in the visitor economy sector.