SOFT SKILLS NEEDED FOR THE TOURISM INDUSTRY (THE CASE OF BULGARIA)

Resumen

Over the decades the tourism and hospitality industry has become one of the fastest-growing
economic sectors in the world and it not only opens millions of job positions but also requires a lot
of new approaches in educational training and practice. Within the wide range of services, there is
often a lack of closer relations between the skills needed and the competences acquired by tourism
students and specialists. Whereas some hard skills are traditionally taught at the educational
institutions, other skills, called soft skills, often remain beyond the educators’ aims. This paper relates
soft skills to the educational background of the prospective specialist in the field of tourism and aims
at identifying the soft skills of ‘critical’ and of ‘considerable’ importance based on the opinions of three
groups of respondents in Bulgaria.