Diagnosis of competencies in the meetings industry in Poland, Hungary and Ireland in post-COVID-19 period

  • Received September 23, 2021;
    Accepted October 29, 2021;
    Published November 8, 2021
  • Author(s)
    ORCID Researcher ID , ORCID ,
    Affiliation: Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Tourism and Leisure, the University College of Tourism and Ecology
    Sandor Nemethy
    ORCID , ORCID , ORCID
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.19(4).2021.17
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2021, Issue #4, pp. 198-212
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The freezing of economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused damage not only on the sales side but also on the labor market due to the outflow of staff from companies specializing in the organization of meetings. The return of the meetings industry sector to the development path will involve skillful change management, including in the area of competencies and skills. To inventory and assess the competencies of employees in the meetings industry, this study was carried out among specialized enterprises in the meetings industry in Poland, Hungary, and Ireland, on samples of two research groups, i.e. the Director General (CEO) and operational employees based on questionnaires and individual in-depth interviews (IDI). The obtained results allowed to establish the hierarchy of self-assessment of own managerial competencies, assessment of the competencies of the CEO by the employees, areas of increasing team competencies, and areas of staff development in the sector shortly, contributing to the recovery from the pandemic crisis.
Raising the competencies and qualifications of employees is perceived as one of the most powerful tools for overcoming the pandemic crisis, obtaining 68% positive indications among CEOs in Poland, 77% indications in Hungary, and 84% in Ireland. In all analyzed countries, the meetings industry is indicated as a strategic product of the tourist market. Among the planned long-term actions aimed at overcoming the pandemic crisis, increasing employee competencies is perceived as an opportunity for the companies operating the meetings industry sector (90% in Poland, and 80% in Hungary and Ireland).

Acknowledgment
This study was done in frames of the project “Vocational competences in MICE sector” co-financed in frames of European Union program Erasmus + as part of the program The Dialog for Transformation, Erasmus+, 2020–2021.

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    • Figure 1. Managerial competencies of the CEO
    • Figure 2. Aggregated components of employee competencies
    • Figure 3. The level of personality traits of the enterprise team
    • Figure 4. Areas of staff development in the MICE sector in the near future
    • Table 1. Structure of the research sample
    • Table 2. Type of business activity – CEO
    • Table 3. Type of business activity– employees
    • Table 4. Social competencies of the enterprise team
    • Table 5. The indication of the desired sector competencies to overcome the crisis
    • Table 6. Opinions of CEOs on the assessment of the prospects for recovery by segment
    • Table 7. Assessment of the competencies of the CEO
    • Table 8. Personal social competencies
    • Table 9. Aggregated components of competencies of the employees
    • Conceptualization
      Bartłomiej Walas
    • Funding acquisition
      Bartłomiej Walas, Marek Nocoń
    • Methodology
      Bartłomiej Walas
    • Writing – original draft
      Bartłomiej Walas, Marek Nocoń, Sandor Nemethy, Anna Oleksa-Kaźmierczak
    • Writing – review & editing
      Bartłomiej Walas, Sandor Nemethy, František Petrovič
    • Formal Analysis
      Marek Nocoń, Sandor Nemethy
    • Project administration
      Marek Nocoń
    • Supervision
      Marek Nocoń
    • Investigation
      Sandor Nemethy, František Petrovič
    • Validation
      Sandor Nemethy, František Petrovič
    • Data curation
      Anna Oleksa-Kaźmierczak
    • Software
      Anna Oleksa-Kaźmierczak
    • Visualization
      Anna Oleksa-Kaźmierczak