Central and Tay Nguyen regions suffer shortage of tourism staff

Central and Tay Nguyen regions tourism, despite being home to bountiful tourist treasure troves, tourism in Vietnam's Central and Tay Nguyen regions is facing a crisis: not of attraction, but of manpower.

Tourism is big business in Vietnam, not least in the country's central and Tay Nguyen regions. Here revenue has increased markedly with an annual growth rate of 20.2%.

Five out of the country's six world heritages recognised by UNESCO are located in the central region as well as popular tourist destinations Hue, Hoi An, Phan Thiet, Mui Ne and Da Lat City Vietnam.

However, juxtaposed with a rise in visitors is the demand for quality staff and it is in this area the region is lacking.

According to chief of the central region's representative office of the National administration of Tourism, Ho Viet, the fundamental problem is finding graduates who not only have strong foreign language skills but are also professionally adept.

"(However) graduates who are trained in foreign languages at tourism training schools can communicate well but don't have the required professional skills and visa versa, tourism workers who have sufficient professional skills don't have enough knowledge in foreign languages," Viet says.

Another issue is the fact that tourism policy makers in the region are focusing on improving infrastructure rather than investing money in developing human resources, he adds.

There are dozens of tourism projects in Da Nang City Vietnam, each requiring staff in the hundreds but there are too few institutions that will produce trained staff besides Hue Tourism School which every year trains 1,450 students, many of them on short courses.

But the future is not all cloudy. Talking about the long-term potential to develop human resources, Ho Viet confirmed that two tourism schools in Nha Trang City Vietnam and Lam Dong Province Vietnam will be put into operation next year.

"Da Nang City's Tourism Department is going to build a tourism school and co-operate with the Japanese International Co-operation Agency to establish a tourism institute," he says.

With such gems as beautiful white beaches, ancient towns and temples, tourism in the region is expected to receive 10mil visitors in 2010, 2.1mil coming from abroad.

This will result in an annual GDP growth of 17%, 1.5 times higher than the GDP growth of tourism for the whole country. It is therefore imperative that this growth is manned to its best advantage.

(Source: Viet Nam News)