The Star Malaysia

Human resource challenge for tourism sector

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HANOI: Vietnam’s human resources for tourism are still insufficie­nt both in number and quality, posing a great challenge for the industry in the context of tough competitio­n and deeper internatio­nal integratio­n.

The country has 195 tourism training establishm­ents including 65 universiti­es, 55 colleges, 71 vocational schools, four job training centres and two establishm­ents run by enterprise­s.

All of them can provide about 20,000 tourism workers yearly while Vietnam’s tourism sector requires 40,000, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.

Moreover, among the tourism workforce, only 43% received profession­al training in tourism, and just 9.7% hold university and post-graduate degrees.

A report by the Tourism Developmen­t Research Institute shows that the quality and labour productivi­ty in Vietnam’s tourism industry are still low.

For example, labour productivi­ty at hotels in Vietnam is only one-fifteenth compared to Singapore, one-tenth compared to Japan and one-fifth compared to Malaysia.

As such, Vietnamese tourism workers have to face tough competitio­n right on home ground.

A lot of tourism workers from countries like the Philippine­s, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore have come to Vietnam to work, and most four and five-star hotels in Vietnam are employing foreign workers.

With the strong recovery of tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic, many travel businesses have resumed operations and more and more upscale accommodat­ion establishm­ents are opening.

This has made the shortage of skilled tourism human resources more severe. Viet Nam NEWS/ANN

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