Development of Tourism in Apulia Region and Training of Tour Operators

The research has been developed within So.Net.TO (Social Network for Tourism Operators) project, in partnership with the Technological Institute of Epirus (lead University), the Department of Humanities of the University of Foggia and the Department of Classical Philology and Philosophical Sciences of the University of Salento. The objective of the research was to identify and define innovative services capable of promoting the development of the territories involved through the adoption of collaborative models, with the help of ICT for creating communities of practice of tour operators, professionally capable of promoting sustainable local development processes. The implications appear to be linked to the possibility to raising the employment rate especially among young people in tourism segments (the high end) which appear to be in great expansion, compared to a generalized crisis of the tourism sector, consequent the more general and global economic and financial crisis that is facing the entire planet. The originality of the project is linked to the idea of investing in initial and continuing training of tour operators as a fundamental variable to capitalize on the natural and human resources of Apulia. It is to think about a model operator training that combines cultural awareness and entrepreneurship through the development of management skills able to qualify the professionalism of all those operators engaged in different ways in the tourism sector.