Vietnam needs more grads for tourism

HANOI  Vietnam National Administration of Tourism says its tourism and hospitality sector will create 250,000 job opportunities over the next five years.
The challenge is to ensure there are enough graduates who want to join the tourism industry to fill new job opportunities.
According to VNAT, the administration has conducted studies to determine the specific needs in tourism to boost employment levels. The main problem is to attract the right people as tourism competes with industries that are prepared to offer brighter career paths with higher pay scales.
Demand over the next five years for jobs in the sector will reach tens of thousands and the overriding strategy in the coming period is to match jobs and workers with the right skill sets, the VNAT representative told local media.
inside no 4Generally, English is considered to be the most important medium of communication for tourism, but tourists from non-English speaking countries will feel more at home if they can communicate with guides who can speak their languages VNAT noted.
Currently the country has roughly 6,700 tour guides. Only half of them can communicate in English, while 1,000 can speak French, 961 Chinese, and 375 German.
Using Japanese as a specific example, there are only 431 tour guides. Around 2,000 are needed.
In English the demand is around 10,000, but over the next five years demand for Chinese, guides will also explode.
A recent survey conducted by the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism showed that 30% to 40% of tour guides and 70% to 80% of others in the tourism and hospitality industries failed to meet basic minimum foreign language standards.
The tourism sector will need an additional 40,000 workers each year over the next five years, but training institutes are providing less than 15,000 graduates annually.

sourced:ttrweekly.com