New approval criteria for qualifications in Travel and Tourism

Qualifications Wales has today published approval criteria for post-16 qualifications in Travel and Tourism. This comes following an extensive sector review, and stakeholder participation in a recent survey on the draft approval criteria.

With 11.8% of Wales’ total workforce employed within the sector, this marks a new milestone for Travel and Tourism qualifications in Wales. From January 2024, the Awarding Bodies who currently offer these qualifications will begin to develop the new qualifications, ready for first teaching in September 2026.

The approval criteria set out some key requirements for the content and assessment of these qualifications, including giving learners opportunities to:

• explore customer service skills, digital technology and marketing
• demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of travel and tourism contexts on a local, regional, national and global scale including relevant Welsh legislation and policy

In the future, Approved Travel and Tourism qualifications must also include a minimum of 40% non-examination assessment (NEA).

Full details of the sector review and the published approval criteria are available on the Qualifications Wales website.

Lisa Mitchell, Qualifications Wales’ Qualifications Manager, said : “The pandemic was particularly challenging for the travel and tourism industry but it remains a really important sector in terms of Wales’ overall workforce. Publication of new approval criteria today is the next stage in ensuring that learners will have access to a wide range of appropriate qualifications which reflect how the sector is now operating. I would like to thank all those who have collaborated with us on this work, including our Stakeholder Advisory Group, Sector Qualification Group and members of our Discussion Group, all consisting of a broad range of employers and FE representatives, who offered us advice and guidance and challenged our proposals so constructively throughout.”