Enhancing Education-Employment Alignment in Hospitality: A Shared Responsibility of Public and Private Sectors

Abstract

Within a context of sustained growth in the hotel industry in Marrakech, a persistent mismatch between vocational training programs and labor market requirements remains a major challenge for the development of qualified human capital. This study aims to examine how limited cooperation among territorial stakeholders affects the alignment between training and employment and constrains the availability of a highly skilled workforce. The methodology is based on twelve semi-structured interviews conducted with six Human Resources managers in hotels and six OFPPT trainers, followed by a manual content analysis that allowed the emergence of robust thematic categories. The findings reveal that shortcomings in territorial governance, the absence of structured employability-monitoring mechanisms, weak information sharing and insufficient co-construction of training curricula constitute the main drivers of the training and employment gap. From a scientific perspective, the study demonstrates the critical role of territorial governance in skills alignment and, from a practical perspective, it formulates actionable recommendations for establishing a strengthened public private cooperation mechanism to enhance sustainable local employability.

Classification JEL: Z32

Paper type: Applied research