International academic mobility in tourism vocational education as a factor of the international labor market's development

Russian tourism vocational education has faced a number of restructuring measures in recent years and is now making progress in becoming a sustainable system integrated into the higher education system and the international labor market with a high degree of readiness for further development and innovation. However, the global pandemic has shown that some optimization of the structure and priorities of Russian vocational education in the field of tourism is still desirable. This paper presents an analysis of major problems and possible ways to overcome them from the standpoint of educational design, including such issues as international academic mobility, credit transfer, blended learning. The paper also expands on features of internationalization abroad and at home in the context of challenges and opportunities in the post-COVID era. The central research issue is interrelations between academic mobility, tourism vocational education and labor market. The authors argue that in many configurations of circumstances the best way for the development of international academic mobility is blended mobility, which could become the most important link between secondary vocational and higher tourism education of both Russian and foreign educational organizations - and, thus, lead to a sustainable supply of human resources in the international labor market. The paper also approaches the shortage of highly qualified personnel in the rapidly growing tourism sector. This problem is becoming chronic. In this regard, the formation of a structured framework of qualifications in the form of the national qualifications system is in high demand not only as a general institution for the strategic development of Russian educational organizations, but also as a means of training personnel, technologies, competencies and innovative potential of the tourism and hospitality industry. The formation of the national qualifications framework in the Russian Federation with respect to the tourism sector can gradually increase relevance of vocational tourism education to the labor market’s demands both in Russia and abroad.