Growing The Golf Industry In Vietnam
Hoiana Shores creates dedicated, golf-specific staffing source
In preparation for its opening in 2019, Hoiana Shores Golf Club has secured a long-term pipeline of trained staff through its innovative investment in the Quang Nam-based Golf Operations and Maintenance Vocational College, the first such golf-specific enterprise in all of Asia.
The first graduating class of maintenance staffers will join the grounds crew at Hoiana Shores GC in January 2019, while the inaugural class of caddies started on Dec. 10, 2018. All students from this program are guaranteed employment with Hoiana Shores GC. After 5 years of supplying staff directly to Hoiana Shores (in addition to its sister hotel and casino development next door), the school itself will be turned over directly to Quang Nam Peoples Committee.
“Vietnam today is widely seen as the most active course development market in the world, there are 45 courses now in operation and another 20+ in some stage of development,” explains Ben Styles, Vice President of Golf & Residential Development at Hoiana Shores GC. “Nowhere in the country has development been so active than here on the Central Coast. There has been an explosion of development, golf and otherwise, and Quang Nam Province has wisely supported this activity with a local tourism college that has trained of thousands of resort and hotel workers to date.”
“However, a golf course has specific needs when it comes to staff. This is the first program with a specialized autonomous ‘bricks and mortar’ home ever created in Asia and judging from the reactions we’ve received from within the golf industry, it’s poised to meet a glaring need.”
Hoiana Shores GC, designed by Robert Trent Jones II, will have a soft opening this summer with a grand opening scheduled for late 2019. Since his 2007 arrival in
Vietnam, Styles, a native Australian PGA member, has witnessed first-hand the development boom. Labor, staff and training have been persistent issues throughout his tenure, he says.
“Apart from Vietnam, we’ve all seen how golf courses across Southeast Asia open with certain agronomic and hospitality standards, only to abandon those standards over time,” Styles says. “That’s a result of staff not being trained up properly by the time the original Director of Golf or General Manager moves on. At the same time, here in Danang and Hoi An, demand for skilled staff has clearly outpaced supply."
The Golf Operations and Maintenance Vocational College (GOMVC) is part of HOIANA-QUANG Nam Vocational Training Centre and Hoiana Shores has so far spent more than US$300,000 rehabbing and outfitting the college, and surely boasts the most manicured school grounds in all of Vietnam.
The first class of 24 students arrived in October 2018, in the course maintenance curriculum. Upon graduation, they will transition directly to work at the golf property proper, where the grassing of golf holes is already underway.
Meanwhile, 25 caddie and golf operations students, who started their own distinct curriculum will be fully trained prior to the soft opening in June.
The course superintendent at Hoiana Shores GC, Rob Weiks, is the turf expert who supplied an international-standard syllabus for the course maintenance curriculum at GOMVC. His HSGC colleague, Director of Golf Kelly Nguyen, did likewise on the caddie and operations front. Every graduate will receive the first-ever accredited degrees for Golf Operations and Maintenance in Vietnam.
“We’ve received so much support, I think because people in the golf industry recognize the need and want to see it succeed, then replicated all across Southeast Asia,” Styles said. “It’s our desire and commitment to build up a sustainable golf industry where Vietnamese talents are prepared to run it.”