Core Tourism. INA. Costa Rica.
- Train human talent required by Costa Rican tourism market.
- Establish and maintain a system of standardization, training and competency certification for the sector.
- Provide technological support to companies to make them more competitive and productive.
- Design and implement a system of quality assurance of internal and external management of the core.
Young people of 18 years with:
- Sixth degree approved (II basic education cycle).
- Availability of time (Split shift) to carry out supervised teaching practices in hotels and/or gastronomy tourist companies.
For levels of expertise:
- 9 degree approved (completion of basic general education).
- Basic knowledge of English.
- Knowledge of computer software on tourism.
- Work experience in the sector – 1 to 3 years, depending on the course.
For tour guide courses it is necessary to submit current medical certificate and have knowledge of a foreign language. Beneficiaries are all those who directly or indirectly are connected to tourism sector (hotels, restaurants, and tourism services).
INA tourism core articulates with other cores of the institution, subregional units and with a variety of public-private tourism companies in order to provide the best training to young people for their future insertion into the labour market.
Programs designed by this core are mainly implemented at the National Expertise Centre for Hotel and Tourism, in the Capital, and in regional units.
Gastronomy subsector, comprising the hotel kitchen areas and food and beverage service, aims to provide quality training required by the Costa Rican market, it offers cooking courses, food and beverage services as well as complementary modules and occupational certification.
Hosting subsector, INA aims to support the growth of the housing industry and ensure compliance with market needs, providing operational and administrative training in the tourism sector and ensuring the quality and service excellence. This subsector provides training for different processes that match reception and reservations, housekeeping, hotel maid, rural tourism management, general manager of small tourism businesses and tourism companies’ animation.
Tourism services subsector is responsible for training operational and administrative resources to support domestic and international travellers. This subsector has courses that integrate functional areas of tourist guide for travel agencies and airlines. These are general tourism guide, adventure and local tourism, besides assessing travel agencies and airlines.
Educational offers of the three subsectors are made through training at the centres and the practices are done in hotels and/or restaurants supervised by qualified staff.
The three subsectors offer virtual bidding.
- By pursuing the strategy of concentrating on development areas, with emphasis on supporting microenterprises, offer and demand for skills in management and social participation is improved.
- This strategy requires continuous, flexible and diversified training systems, to improved labor entry: diversified skills demand a joint public-private institutional articulation.
- It involves the balanced development of different regions in the country, without violating natural resources or modify the socio-cultural context of each country. On the contrary, diversity is used as catalyst of the process.
- It provides technically decentralized units that promote interdisciplinarity of specialized partners in different areas of training.
- It promotes coordination between regional and local authorities by pooling joint and complementary use of multidisciplinary resources devoted to training.
It is important to highlight the encouragement to participative and equitable local development to all inhabitants of the country.
It meets the three models of development contained in the National Tourism Development Plan (PNDT), carried out by the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.
According to 2010 data:
• 100% of employers say their companies are benefited by hiring graduates of the INA.
• 100% of students would be willing to continue learning in the INA.
• 97% of students said they could move up in their jobs.
• 100% agree they managed to have salary increments.
