ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF TRAINING HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE VIETNAM TOURISM SECTOR FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

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1 ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF TRAINING HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE VIETNAM TOURISM SECTOR FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION Ian Ralston Retired Principal, Education Department of New South Wales, Australia Le Thi Ngoc Diep Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, HCMC, Vietnam Pham Thai Son Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, HCMC, Vietnam Abstract. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Vietnam is among countries with the highest tourism growth rates in the region and the whole world as well. The rapid growth poses an increasing demand on human resources development for the Tourism industry. With the integration trend towards regional and the global tourism market, the demand for human resources of Vietnam tourism must be met not only in quantity but also in quality. The increased cooperation between schools and businesses and attention and support from the government are key factors in enhancing the quality of human resources development for tourism, and help to give the tourism sector a growth worth its potential and standing in the social and economic development strategy of the country. Keywords: human resources, integration, Vietnam tourism 1. Introduction In recent years, towards an overall development of society, more focus has been placed on the demand for vocational training which includes tourism career training. Though not new, tourism career training practically faces many challenges in the management aspect as well as quality of traing. Tourism is a service economy sector, in which the product is constituted by human labor services, aiming towards serving tourists. On the other hand, tourist activity is a service so production and consumption process occur simultaneously and that service quality is directly dependent on workers qualifications, skills and attitudes. So, the human factor in tourism is the primary key to help fulfill the objective of "developing tourism into a spearhead economic sector, taking an increasing proportion of GDP, creating a drive for social and economic development

2 "(Strategy for Vietnam tourism development till 2020 with vision to 2030). Better human resources development for tourism will ensure that the Vietnam tourism industry can mobilize its own inherent strengths, seize the opportunity and overcome challenges during international integration. 2. Current status of human resource development in Vietnamese tourism today In 2014, the country received 7.87 million international visitors and served 38.5 million domestic visitors, with revenue totalling VND billion, contributing about 7% of the GDP. The goal is to attract 18 million international visitors and 71 million domestic visitors by 2030, with growth rates per year of 5.2% and 4.1% respectively, and to become a country with a developed tourism industry. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Vietnam is among countries with the highest tourism growth rates in the region and the whole world as well. Table 1. Projection of Targets for Vietnam Tourism Development Period Unit: visitors Targets International visitors 7,943,651 10,500,000 14,000,000 18,000,000 Domestic visitors 57,000,000 45,500,000 58,000,000 71,000,000 Revenue from tourism (USD Billion) % of tourism revenue to GDP % Direct workforce in tourism sector 620, ,000 1,050,000 1,400,000 Workforce in tourism sector (both direct and indirect) 2,108,000 2,958,000 3,570,000 4,760,000 Source: Institute for Tourism Development Research, 2012, The development strategy of Vietnam s tourism by 2020 and vision to 2030, Hanoi, pp The rapid growth poses an increasing demand on human resources development for the industry. According to the Report by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2011, there were 284 establishments in the country providing tourism career training, including 62 universities, 80 colleges, 117 vocational schools; 2 companies and 23 training centers and courses. The existence and expansion of this tourism career training system indicates the strong growth in tourism human resources development. Annual enrollment now reaches 22,000 with these trainees and students serving as the source of nationwide workforce for the tourism industry. So far,

3 the tourism workforce consists of more than 2 million people, including direct employees with beginner to intermediate and college levels accounting for 47.3% of total workfoce, both direct and indirect; total workforce with undergraduate and postgraduate level in tourism accounts for only 7.4%; the number of labors under beginning level and with some updated knowledge in tourism accounts for 45.3% of total industry s manpower. Tourism workforce tends to increase, reflecting the growing role of the sector and the effectiveness of privatizing tourism activities. Overall, tourism workforce is evaluated as people trained with the challenges of time, with firm political point of view, and an attitude of dynamic, flexibility, trying to overcome difficulties and striving to implement the Party and the government s guidelines and policies for tourism innovation and development, with a sense of responsibility, enthusiasm and dedication to the profession, and with the ability to quickly update knowledge and with strong will to establish themselves or their businesses. There have been improvements in governmental management on training and retraining of the tourism workforce in terms of setting up management units and helping people to implement regulations on training, retraining, carrying out disciplinary and interdisciplinary inspections on training and human resources development for tourism; enrollment is increasing and will gradually better meet practical demand. Annual training and retraining is increasing in scale, with training quality being basically guaranteed and gradually linked to social needs. There is a positive shift regarding curriculum structure. Many trained in careers and skills have met the requirements by tourism development, as well as training goals in particular and the social and economic development in the context of international integration in general. Besides, there has been attention and a boost towards human resource development in tourism during recent years. Training facilities and systems have been expanded, upgraded, and enhanced in terms of capacity. Teaching staff have been trained and retrained; training courses and curriculum have been improved, and in a particular move, the sector has formalized 13 standards for tourism career skills; onsite job training has been implemented with trainers; training methods which are renovated thanks to foreign support also have contributed largely in training, retraining and updating human resources for the sector. Thus, disadvantages and weaknesses in human resources have been overcome step by step lately.

4 At the same time, the government also pays attention and supports human resource development for the tourism sector and considers this a priority besides investment for tourism infrastructure, promotion, brand development, preservation and promotion of natural resources, protection of the tourism environment and applied research. Table 2. Structure of Investment Budget on Human Resources Development ( ) Unit: USD Billion Investment Targets Ratio Investment on human resources development 7% Source: Institute for Tourism Development Research, 2012, The development strategy of Vietnam s tourism by 2020 and vision to 2030, Hanoi, pp

5 The Government also invests itself and supports the privatization of human resource development, expands its investment for tourism career training facilities, sets up standards for training and skills, improves teaching staff qualifications, invests in the development of high level tourism executives and managers as well as raises awareness on tourism for all governmental officers of all levels and sectors and local communities related to the tourism industry. International and regional experience in human resource development has been transferred and acquired selectively and promptly through human resource development projects and tourism development projects as well as foreign direct investment projects; the acquisition of technology transfer, know-how and knowledge has been evaluated as a strong point in tourism human resource development in recent years. However, in the context of global integration, development and competition, especially in the high-end service sector, Vietnam tourism human resources still fail to meet the demand of a highly competitive environment. This results in the popular and growing high rate of unemployment or misemployment among graduates while businesses are in constant need of qualified staff or likely to have to retrain their recruitment; or to put in other words, tourism businesses currently lack skilled manpower, while many graduates in tourism have to do jobs that requires just a lower level of training. The general assessement is that the quality of tourism human resources has not yet to meet demand regarding professionalism, management and communication skills and quality of service. The Tourism industry really lacks business leaders that can cope with high competitiveness and global integration. Somewhat, we also lack tour guides, considering various particular types of tours and language skills to match target markets. A reason for weaknesses mentioned above is due to huge gaps between the training scale, curriculum structure, training quality and employers demand. It is also due the lack of a centralized management of training content, training programs from vocational schools to colleges, professional hierachy rankings, professional skill standards, and hence a national consistent core curriculum. Besides, with such a fast growth in the tourism industry, the training sector has failed to be on par with the tourism enterprises strong demand of human resources. Another concern is that living skills training is not paid

6 enough attention thoughout training facilities, and while without direct impact on professional operation, it helps build a preferable personality, helps students to achieve a right career attitude, and serves as the basis for career ethics and professional working style; this is what creates added value in customer service. This background shows that the tourism human resources development currently has not reached a high level of professionalism, lacks skilled laborers, fails to meet managerial standards, fails to provide a workforce with good language skills, lacks of self-confidence in the international working environment... which are fundamental barriers to tourism development towards set goals. More of concerns and manpower demands is growing for the tourism industry after the ASEAN Economic Community was established in late 2015 and tourism is among the 8 branches with free flow of labors which requires human resources to be even more competitive to meet global integration and networking requirements. 3. Recommendations and solutions for human resources development in tourism industry The above background shows that human resources for the tourism sector fails to keep up with demand not only in quantity but also in quality. Therefore, in the future, there should be more active initiatives to boost human resources development for the country's tourism in order to really make tourism a spearhead economic sector. First, to ensure that graduates share a common level of training qualifications to meet job demands, the tourism industry have to institute general criteria for tourism human resources development. This will be the basis for establishments to improve their curricula, or in other words, these criteria will serve as the best guidelines for human resources development. Based on practical analysis of actual demands, there should be planning and guiding to design training courses for upgrading skills of tourism manpower. In addition, training programs need to be planned to ensure sufficient specialized knowledge as well as practical apprenticeship for students. There is also a need to set up inspection units to control service quality, to provide measures and to consider the implementation of an overall quality management system. Besides, there should be better vocational orientation for high school students with focus on pratical businesses demand and the trend of social economic development; there should be regular professional support and

7 guidance for the workforce to build up a sense of commiment to their careers, to try to improve their expertise and skills to better meet requirements for tourism development in the context of international integration. Training courses renovation should focus on understanding the needs of employers and feedback from students, as well as refer to international programs. A balance between theory and practice sould be maintained to ensure knowledge to be up-to-date and modern, as well as fit with the requirements by employers and the sector s demand in terms of both quantity and quality. Transferability between training levels should be ensured to provide best opportunities for learners to improve their expertise. For internship, schools need to have stronger ties with businesses to improve practicality and makes better use of the cooperation. Businesses should provide better job descriptions and performance criteria for students and communicate the outcome to their teaching staff. Besides, schools should also inform businesses of apprenticeship requirements and goals... so they can prepare internship task lists accordingly and better support students during apprenticeship. Cooperation should be expanded with universities and colleges in the country and abroad that have good capability and credibility to train high quality human resources for the tourism sector. Training expansion should go in parallel with training quality enhancement; there should be an upgrade of training facilities and standardization of vocational teaching staff in tourism sector. Teachers, lecturers and trainers for the tourism industry could be developed through various channels, both domestically and internationally, to supply the source for teaching staff; there should be policies to attract managers, scientists, entrepreneurs, artisans, professionals and highly skilled workers to participate in training activity; there should also be continual training and efficient employing of tourism inspectors, supervisors and trainers. Regular retrainings should be provided for teachers, lecturers, trainers and inspectors in tourism industry. Due to the tourism sector s unique features, it s essential and beneficial to support teachers and trainers to update their knowledge through practical experience at businesses, which would help with their teaching. Policies to encourage human resource development, privatization of training activities should be enhanced by providing support for enterprises in tourism services, non-public training facilities and other foreign

8 invested facilities. There should be further search for funding sources for training more workers, more implementation of development programs to support small and medium enterprises... Training facilities and businesses should be encouraged to improve their technical infrastructure, curriculum contents, programs and teaching methods, and to enhance their teaching staff for a better training quality. Promotion should place an on-site needbased training for enterprises, transferability from low to high training levels, from unskilled to supervising and managerial levels. Recruit students for internship or parttime jobs, businesses can solve the labor shortage problem while students can gain practical experience with their work. Cooperation between enterprises and training institutions should be based on actual demand so training activites should be job-oriented. Joint cooperative training relationship between government, schools and enterprises could be reinforced. Governmental budget for training and retraining should be expended efficiently. Tourism training institutions could be encouraged to set up commercial facilities of corresponding services to provide apprenticeship facilities for students and to create more funding for training. 4. Conclusion For tourism, human resources play a decisive role in raising the quality of services. This is so critical that we have to focus on training and retraining of human resources to serve the established objectives. With the integration trend towards regional and the global tourism market, the demand for human resources of Vietnam tourism must be met not only in quantity but also in quality. Therefore, if there is no radical approach with positive and breakthrough solutions, as well as strong coordination between parties during the training and employing of tourism human resources, it would be difficult to meet the growing demand in terms of quantity and quality of human resource development required by tourism sector. It can be said that human resources development for tourism sector, particularly in the context of today s international integration, is currently facing many difficulties and challenges. The increased cooperation between schools and businesses and attention and support from the government are key factors in enhancing the quality of human resources development for tourism, and help to give the tourism sector a growth worth its potential and standing in the social and economic development strategy of the country. References

9 General Department of Tourism (2013), The Master Plan for Tourism Development in Vietnam till 2020, with vision to 2030, the Socialist Labour Publishing House, Hanoi. pp Need Analysis of Human Resources & Its Development for Vietnam's Tourism as part of the The Environmentally and Socially Responsible Tourism Capacity Development Programme (EU Project), pp Trần Văn Hùng "High Quality Human Resources Development for Universities," The human resource development plan for tourism industry from 2011 to 2020,