Keywords

Hotel Business, Entrepreneurial Activity, Educational Technology, Smart-Education, Case Studies, Implementation Model.

JEL Classifications

I2, F6

Introduction

The twenty-first century is the century when information technologies become an integral part of a person’s living space. Today, we can state with confidence the fact of the existence of a new digital generation of people for whom a mobile phone, a computer and the Internet are the same natural elements of their living space. For the development of modern specialized education, especially in the hotel industry, traditional methods and approaches are no longer enough. It is the educational environment that needs to be changed, not just to increase the volume of educational programs, but the very content of education, its methods, tools and environment should change qualitatively, a general transition to the technology of SMART-education of staff, especially in the dynamic sphere of the hospitality industry, is needed.

The SMART-society sets a new global task for the services sector: training of staff with creative potential who can think and work quickly. To do this, they need to be taught new practical skills: communicate with clients, select useful information, work with electronic sources, maintain knowledge bases, which requires a change in the nature of training. The content of the SMART-concept in education in each area is understood differently, as in the hotel business this results in a number of new effects that satisfy the needs of both hotel clients and management.

Literature Review

In modern world, the formation of a new trend is observed, offering educational services in dynamic areas of the economy of fundamentally new quality, as can be seen from scientific works of (Brill & Galloway, 2007; Makedon et al., 2019). At the same time, the processes and techniques of SMART-education are reflected in a number of subsequent publications of Finkenzeller (2010) and Hong & Hwang (2012). In the work (Wenger et al., 2011) we see that the main goals of the modern educational concept is to create an environment that provides the highest level of training to improve the skills and abilities of staff (Drobyazko et al., 2019, Karpenko et al., 2018). Thus, the SMART-feature has such educational processes that, when interacting with the environment, react to changes in the external environment and adapt to them in order to achieve a result.

Methodology

A modern system of applied education, in which the process of training personnel in the service sector and especially the hotel industry, is carried out using information and electronic technologies, is based on the methodological foundations: ensuring openness and flexibility of training involves the creation of possibilities for staff training, at any opportunity; individualization using incoming and current controls and the provision of educational materials for each hotel employee; interactivity in the patterns of contacts “personnel-education system”.

The method of educational content for the hotel industry staff, its compliance with the real problems of the industry cannot be provided only through passive forms of training and information. For this reason, in order to obtain the effect of training, the involvement of representatives of the hotel business is required.

Findings and Discussion

E-training and distance education have launched a new global phenomenon–smart-education-this is training in an interactive educational space with the help of global content that is freely available. SMART-education allows you to generate new knowledge and shape the personality of a SMART-person who is fluent in information and computer technologies for searching and analyzing information and creating innovations. SMART-education has a number of positive characteristics, in particular: universality-ensuring compatibility and the possibility of implementing the continuity of the educational process and the integrity of educational information; independence from time and place, mobility, continuity and ease of access to educational information; assessment of changes in competences-the effectiveness of the educational process is measured not so much by the knowledge gained, as by the possibility of its application in practice; flexible training in terms of the benefits and individual abilities of students (the ability to customize training for individual parameters, such as: initial knowledge, experience and skills, training style (Burbules, 2012).

Thus, the goal of “smart” education is to make the training process more efficient thanks to the transfer of the educational process to the electronic environment. SMART-education predetermines the use of SMART-approach, which aims to achieve a specific goal in the training process: S (Self Directed)–providing opportunities for self-determination of what to study, and effective organization of independent training; M (Motivated)–motivation for active cognitive activity; A (Adaptive)–adaptation of methods, place and time of training for a specific subject who wants to purchase educational services; R (Resourse Free)–providing free access to educational resources; T (Technology Embedded)–continuous provision of the training process with modern technologies (Kim et al., 2014).

As part of the concept of SMART-education, the idea of the initial formulation of a practical problem (providing a real case for the solution) was proposed with the subsequent provision of relevant theoretical material, the study of which allows solving the business problem set in the context of a hotel or a hotel complex.

The basis of the SMART-approach to the training of hotel industry staff is the presentation of theoretical material for solving a real business problem. (O’Dwyer et al., 2010). To implement this concept within each subject area, it is necessary to create a base of business cases of real managers of hotel complexes (Table 1).

Тable 1 Technological Elements of Smart-Education of Staff in the Sphere of Hotel Industry
Principle	Principle content
Training process mobility	Ensures the implementation of the principle of training in a convenient place, at a convenient time. Implemented through the use of mobile platforms
Bilateral integration with social media	Provides fast distribution of information about the textbook, as well as the use of information from social media during the training process
Self-completion and self-updating	Provides content of the training course with relevant and complete information.
Online consultations with practitioners	Provides interaction with industry experts
Content Sharing Chain: Listener (Employee)-Creative Course Coauthor	The prospect for the development of SMART-education is the “peer-2-peer training” model, namely, when staff learns, interacts with each other as part of training practices, and also when materials are used in training of the next trainees (employees)
Simultaneous study of the material and the implementation of skills in solving real business problems in the hotel system industry	Practice-oriented presentation of educational material, that is, the implementation of the principle of "case for solving+theoretical material"

This approach underlies the SMART-education process and includes the implementation of a number of steps:

1. Introduction to the course: setting goals and objectives of the course, a description of the training technologies used, characterization of the resulting competencies.

2. Assessment of staff initial competencies. A possible form of conducting: input testing, consisting of 5 basic questions and information about the listener. The level of students is divided into three components: initial, basic, advanced.

3. Providing the listener with the option of a start-to-finish case depending on the level identified for the decision for the entire period of training.

4. Providing materials for staff training in accordance with the SMART-concept.

5. Organization of intermediate control to obtain a listener rating. Possible intermediate control options: testing for knowledge of theoretical material; group discussions, including with the participation of experts, in order to assess the correctness of the solution of case task.

6. Organization of the final defense of the case solution to experts and representatives of the hotel business (the authors of the case) (Greenhow et al., 2009). The case solution is the actual recognition of a sufficient level of competence in the course or functional direction of the hotel complex (Figure 1).

Such a scheme of SMART-educational process allows to solve the problems described above, namely to increase the practice orientation of the whole course, which ultimately leads to an increase in the level of immersion when studying the course materials; effectively use social space, namely social media, as a source of knowledge, as well as a channel for the distribution of educational content (Chatti et al., 2010). Changing the presentation of educational material from the concept of “theory+practical examples” to the concept of “practical business problem+theory necessary to solve it” is an important, but not the only task, the solution of which will allow to call the electronic course as the SMART-educational process.

Recommendations

Recommendations are formed around the fact that SMART-technologies for training staff in the hotel industry should gradually include: electronic materials, computer professional practicum, interactive testing, hotel simulation models, web services, and the like. First of all, a transition to subject-subject training of staff is necessary. That is why the purpose of creating practically oriented professional education in the hotel business is its focus on the use of modern innovative traiding aids. This provides SMART-education as a direction for the development of vocational education of the future, which allows you to expand the time, space, volume of educational materials and methods of industry-specific training.

Conclusion

Thus, SMART-educational technologies will expand the possibilities for staff development in the hotel industry in solving everyday tasks in situations of varying nature and quality of hotel service. These particulat technologies, in our opinion, form the creative potential of the future specialist in the field of hotel industry. The use of technologies and services of the Internet provides new effects-social, economic and other benefits for the growth of quality and speed of service to consumers of hotel services. The effect of integration through the Internet in any object of elements that were not previously combined, leads to the creation of SMART groups in which “smart” work is due to the “smart” management style, and is based on the “smart” hotel infrastructure.

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