Need for breakthrough in tourism human resource training in Vietnam today

At the international workshop "Training and using international standard tourism human resources in the current period" within the framework of the International Tourism Fair - VITM Hanoi 2024, many issues on training and restoring high-quality human resources were discussed by experts.

Labor productivity in the tourism and hotel industry in Vietnam is still low.

According to Prof. Dr. Dao Manh Hung, Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Training Association, up to now, the country has 195 tourism training establishments including: 65 universities with tourism faculties; 55 colleges; 71 secondary schools and 4 vocational training centers; 2 training establishments affiliated with enterprises.

Every year, tourism training establishments graduate about 20,000 students out of about 22,000 students recruited. Of which, there are about 1,800 university and professional college students, 2,100 tourism vocational college students, about 18,200 intermediate level students, in addition to about 5,000 elementary and vocational training under 3 months.

Cần đột phá trong đào tạo nhân lực du lịch ở Việt Nam hiện nay - Ảnh 1. — International workshop "Training and using international standard tourism human resources in the current period".

Prof. Dr. Dao Manh Hung said that the issue of human resource development, especially high-quality human resources, is a challenge for Vietnam tourism in the face of the new situation. This is also an issue in building a sustainable Vietnamese tourism product brand. Within the framework of the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF), compared to other countries in the region, the quality of Vietnam tourism services in general and in major tourist centers is still limited.

According to experts, the quality and productivity of labor in the tourism and hotel industry in Vietnam is still low, according to the report of the Institute for Tourism Development Research.

Specifically, labor productivity in hotels in Vietnam is only 1/15 compared to Singapore, 1/10 compared to Japan and 1/5 compared to Malaysia. Tourism workers are at risk of competing for jobs in Vietnam by workers from ASEAN countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. Currently, many workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore come to Vietnam to work, almost all 4-5 star hotels have foreign workers.

Prof. Dr. Dao Manh Hung also expressed his opinion that the quality of the teaching staff is still low, not meeting the standard requirements; Most training facilities have not yet set output standards; Teaching methods at many tourism schools are still heavy on theory, neglecting or avoiding practice while tourism vocational training needs to prioritize practice at a high rate.

"The paradox is that training requires practice, but when going to internships and training at facilities, students have difficulty accessing real work due to many binding regulations. This leads to a situation where during the internship, students still do not have the ability to access real work and accumulate experience for themselves," said Prof. Dr. Dao Manh Hung.

There has been no breakthrough change in the choice of training model.

Analyzing the existing problems and limitations in training tourism human resources; the trend of training and developing international standard tourism human resources in Vietnam, Associate Professor, Dr. Duong Duc Thang, Head of the Faculty of Tourism (East Asia University of Technology) said: "Training by traditional methods is no longer suitable for the increasingly high standards and demands of the tourism industry.

Tourism human resources today not only need to be fluent in foreign languages but also need to be good at using technology and have the skills to build products according to high quality standards. Meanwhile, many students trained at tourism faculties cannot compete with students who study foreign languages when they graduate due to their poor communication skills with foreigners. This is a sad reality."

Cần đột phá trong đào tạo nhân lực du lịch ở Việt Nam hiện nay - Ảnh 2. — Need for breakthrough in tourism human resource training in Vietnam today

To meet the requirements of training high-quality tourism human resources, Associate Professor Dr. Pham Trung Luong emphasized that it is necessary to have a suitable training policy system, in which the most prominent is the policy of attracting qualified lecturers from outside, including lecturers from prestigious training institutions in the region and around the world .

Policies to improve the professional qualifications of the teaching staff; policies to encourage the integration of teaching activities with research activities; policies to support the upgrading and development of training facilities. In particular, the development, completion and application of the policy system must not discriminate against training institutions with different forms of ownership.

According to Associate Professor Dr. Pham Trung Luong, there has not been a breakthrough change in the selection of training models. Accordingly, the current main training model still follows the "worn path", heavily administrative of the "subsidy" period, does not respect the "supply - demand" principle, lacks vision in the context of integration and the rapid development of science and technology, especially the 4.0 industrial revolution. Therefore, it is necessary to innovate thinking and solutions for the source training model.

Associate Professor Dr. Pham Hong Long, Head of the Faculty of Tourism (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi) said that Vietnam has 3 training trends: Practice, management research, or a combination of these two forms. Currently, there are no standards or criteria for international standard training, which is the difficulty for schools to build a suitable training model. However, schools can comply with international training accreditation regulations with standards such as the network of universities in Asia and Europe.

Vietnam's tourism industry is setting many high demands in tourism development, attracting more international visitors in the coming time, making tourism a key economic sector, contributing more to GDP. Therefore, more than ever, the work of training human resources to international standards is becoming more urgent, and needs to be paid attention to right from the start.

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