This is the second in a series of five posts exploring what 170 tourism SMEs across Europe reported in RESKILL survey about skills, training, and the future of work in hospitality.
When researchers ask employers across different countries what skills matter most, you’d expect regional variation: Different markets, different cultures, different priorities. Surprisingly, the responses we got were remarkably uniform.
Consistent Across Six Countries
When we surveyed 170 tourism SMEs across Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Spain, one skill emerged as the top priority everywhere:
Service design thinking.
Not just highly rated — top rated. In all six countries. Spain scored it highest at 4.68 out of 5, but every country put it at the top of their list. That kind of consensus in survey results is quite rare and therefore worth paying attention to.
What Do We Mean by Service Design Thinking?
Service design has been a buzzword for quite a long time by now. Different practitioners and academics think about it and frame it differently in their respective contexts. Some might even argue that “service design” has lost its meaning — but let’s not get into that discussion.
The point we’re making here is simpler: generally speaking, service design is about understanding the whole experience the customer gets. The service experience is more than just the standard operational processes. It’s the overall feeling the customer takes with them after all has been said and done.
Translated to the hospitality industry, it’s not just about the tasks and processes, but those little details that fall in between the service processes. Recognising them and finding ways to improve the overall experience to make the customer feel welcome — that’s what’s needed.
It means a hotel receptionist who thinks about the guest’s entire journey, not just check-in. A restaurant server who notices when something isn’t working and adapts. A tour guide who reads the group and adjusts the experience accordingly.
It’s the difference between executing tasks and shaping experiences.
And it’s exactly what’s hard to find, according to the employers we surveyed.
Soft Skills Lead, Across the Board
The service design finding sits within a broader pattern. When we asked employers to rate the importance of different skill categories, soft skills came out on top everywhere:
- Soft skills average: 4.17 out of 5
- Digital skills average: 3.86 out of 5
- Green skills average: 3.54 out of 5
Adaptability to change and inclusive service delivery also ranked highly across countries. Employers want people who can think, adjust, and relate to diverse customers — not just follow procedures.
This Isn’t Just About Tourism
Here’s the thing: service design thinking translates far beyond hospitality.
Retail staff who understand the shopping journey. Healthcare workers who see the patient experience holistically. Logistics teams who think about the end customer, not just the delivery. Call centre staff who solve problems rather than follow scripts.
Any customer-facing industry benefits from people who can think in terms of whole experiences. The skills gap we’re seeing in tourism is a window into something broader about what modern service work requires.
Why This Matters Now
It’s worth remembering the context from our first post: hospitality isn’t a sector in decline.
Over half the businesses we surveyed (53%) have fully recovered or are actively growing post-pandemic. They’re not struggling to survive — they’re trying to grow. And they’re hitting a ceiling because they can’t find people who think about service the way customers now expect.
That’s the growth constraint. Not just bodies to fill shifts, but people who can elevate the experience.
Levelling up the service design skills
As employers across Europe report that they need people who can think of great customer experience, that is what RESKILL sets out to deliver.
The way we see it: service design thinking isn’t just a skill. It’s a way of looking at the world. An operating model. A way of scrutinising every situation through the lens of “how does the customer experience this?”
Universities teach service design frameworks and tools to provide the students with solid understanding of what the service design is about. After the lessons learned in the classrooms, comes the practitioner art. It develops through experience, through watching how experienced colleagues handle situations, through guidance from people who already see the world this way.
In RESKILL we will be boosting the learning with a mentorship program, which helps to develop the practitioner art and to evangelise the service design thinking. The aim is to transform solid theoretical foundations into actionable instinct.
Revolution starts with how you see the world. That’s where RESKILL comes in.
Next in this series: The Green Skills Paradox — why 94% of tourism businesses are practicing sustainability, but green skills training is rated the lowest priority.
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The RESKILL project (Reskill Revolution: Pioneering Change in Adult Education) is co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme. Survey data with responses from tourism SMEs in Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Spain.
