Introduction
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Technology and especially coding are crucial parts of the tourism and hospitality industry, helping businesses with daily operations, while also improving the customers' experience.
Scratch is a visual programming language available at https://scratch.mit.edu that allows learners to create their own interactive stories, games, animations and various useful projects and share them with others in an online community.
Scratch is free and available in more than 70 languages! Since Scratch’s launch in May 2007, millions of people all around the world have created and shared more than 46 million projects!
In Scratch, the way you interact with your program is through sprites. Sprites are objects within your program that you can interact with – you can change the way they act using scripts. In the template you are going to use, many of the sprites have already been given basic scripts, such as the buttons. Sprites can be found in the sprite window.
Let's start!
Task
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The so-called “soft skills” are equally important to the so-called “hard" or technical skills, especially in the hospitality industry context. That is why in this task you will have the opportunity to learn more about tourism-related both soft and hard skills.
In this example you will also code a project, which replicates a Hotel Front Desk Management Software System used by staff working at the front desk and in customer service.
Upon completion of this activity the participants would have built a real working software which allows them to:
- View Available Rooms
- Create Occupied Rooms List
- Check a customer in & out of a Room
Process
If you are interested to work in the hospitality or tourism sector, remember that soft skills can make a difference. The proposed links and free e-courses suggested in the resources section have a lot to offer. You can start by watching the proposed video "Why is customer service important?".
Make the next step by registering yourself into the Tour2Include e-learning platform (available in English, Deutsch, Italiano, Ελληνικά). This course introduces low-skilled migrants working or wishing to work in different job positions in the Tourism Sector to acquire the necessary skills and qualifications in order to facilitate their integration into the labor market and enhance their employability in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. The aim of this course is to cover the needs and preferences of groups with or without advanced digital skills, fostering intercultural/soft skills that are equally important with the typical qualifications so as to increase migrants' access to formal employment, reducing their exposure to undeclared work, through their upskilling.
In order to complete this task, you are also required to read the introductory texts about Scratch in the links section, watch the proposed intoructory video and follow the instructions in the PDF titled "Scratch -Hotel and Restaurant Management - Beginner" in the documents section.
Conclusion
Both soft and hard skills can be learned through education and practice.
Learning to code is like learning how to read and write in a different medium! As beginner learners start designing Scratch projects, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically and -depending the project- work collaboratively.
The ability to code computer programs is an important part of digital literacy in today’s society and a great asset if you are looking for a job in the hotel and restaurant management sector.
If you have completed the beginners' task, you are ready to move on to the intermediate section!
Learning Objectives
- Be introduced to the concept of computational creation, in the context of Scratch
- Become familiar with resources that support computational creation
- Code a project, which replicates a Hotel Front Desk Management Software System used by staff working in at the front desk and in customer service
- Build a real working software which allows employees to: View Available Rooms, Create Occupied Rooms List, Check a customer in & out of a Room
- Demonstrate problem solving skills
- Express creativity using coding and technology
- Understand the importance of both hard and soft skills for employees in the tourism/hospitality sector