Disneyland Shanghai is joining forces with a number of local education institutions as it aims to increase its local talent pool with a new specialised training programme.

Partnering with a selection of 10 universities, colleges and schools within the region, each Shanghai Disney Resort Talent Class will host 30 to 50 people, teaching them best practice in service excellence to a Disney standard.

According to Disney, outstanding participants will be able to apply for further training in the US, with internships available at Disney World Florida for animation designers, makeup artists, accountants and mechanical technicians.

The operator has already shown its commitment to training its staff locally, hiring more than 10,000 staff from Shanghai and across China.

“The scale of it was something quite extraordinary for us,” said Craig Russell, chief design and project delivery executive at Disney Imagineering, speaking at IAAPA in November.

“It ended up being this very interesting learning curve where you’ve got 150 very experienced Imagineers and then a couple hundred less experienced Imagineers. Then that scale included contractors and more and you’ve suddenly got 10,000 people working on the project. It was an interesting challenge in trying to help that many people up the learning curve, but we managed it.”

Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai Sanda University, Rizhao Polytechnic and the Tourism College of Zhejiang have been confirmed as partner institutions for the scheme, which has been created to help the company to reach its goal of sourcing 98 per cent of its staff locally.

“The resort has already generated thousands of direct and indirect jobs for tourism and cultural industry professionals, and this trend will continue as the resort continues to grow and expand,” said Philippe Gas, general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort.

“Along the way we are also committed to partnering with local authorities and educational institution to support the further development of Shanghai and the Yangzi River Delta’s service industry through talent education and cultivation, leveraging the best Disney practices and resources from around the world.”