Human resource is one of the factors that play an important role in the tourism and service industry. So as to develop sustainable tourism, human resources must have high quality skills and qualifications to increase the competitiveness of businesses and destinations.

The tourism industry is always interested in improving the skills and abilities of its human resources. Exchanges are seen between businesses and customers at the 2023 Da Nang tourism festival. Photo: THU HA

After the peak summer months of welcoming visitors, at this time, service and tourism businesses in the city is paying a lot of attention to training programmes to improve qualifications and professional skills for their tourism industry staff.

Regularly participating in training courses on online sales skills and digital technology applications in business activities, serving the Muslim tourist market organised by the Da Nang Department of Tourism, Mr. Le Thien Tu, the Director of V.E.I Travel & Event Co., Ltd. (V.E.I) shared that after COVID-19, tourist trends have changed a lot in travel habits, customer markets and preferences, so learning more skills and knowledge is very necessary. This will help businesses along with those who directly serve customers be equipped with more knowledge, grasp trends and customer needs to take the right direction.

According to a recent report on the tourism situation by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), since the start of 2023, the global tourism and travel industry has recovered more than 84% as compared to 2019. Forecasting the industry in the coming time, tourism will face many obstacles and challenges, including great difficulties in recovery and human resource development.

Tourism workers in Da Nang say that one of the most difficult difficulties today is the scarcity of high-quality human resources, especially those excelling in destination and policy and executive management as well as heads and staff of highly skilled service departments.

Explaining this issue, a hotel representative acknowledged that it is partly due to the hidden impact of years of COVID-19 that have greatly affected the tourism and service industry. On the other hand, many people have changed careers or moved to other places to work, and that is a reason why there is a shortage of important, highly skilled positions. Not to mention, during the prolonged COVID-19, accommodation and service establishments did not welcome tourists, students or new graduates were not allowed to practice their profession much, and those who were still worked part-time, so it is difficult to ensure expertise and service quality. Therefore, it took much time for new workers to improve their knowledge, skills and profession

Mr. Nguyen Duc Quynh, the General Director of Furama Danang Resort and Chairman of Da Nang Hotels’ Association, said that till date, accommodation establishments have been back in operation. To improve service quality, hotels also have launched on-site training activities. This year, the Da Nang Hotels’ Association has organised professional skills training courses for members such as applying digital platforms, building a sustainable tourist source, organising 2 professional receptionist and housekeeping training courses for trainees from hotels across the city.

On December 19, the Da Nang Hotels’ Association coordinated with relevant agencies to organise the contest ‘Da Nang chef talents competition 2023’ with the participation of chefs from hotels and resorts across the city. “These activities will help connect and create a healthy playground for human resources in the translation industry to exchange experiences, improve skills and service quality.”, Mr. Nguyen Duc Quynh emphasised.

According to Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism Tan Van Vuong, in the first 10 months of 2023, guests served by accommodation establishments reached more than 6.4 million, an increase of 107% over the same period in 2022. To serve the source of incoming visitors, the Department has always paid attention to restoring human resources and improving the quality of tourism services.

Since the beginning of the year, to support businesses in restoring business activities and ensuring the maintenance of service quality and destination brand, the city has supported the organisation of 30 training and fostering classes for human resources to serve tourism and focused on the contents businesses and tourism workers need such as digital transformation knowledge, service mindset, skills, professional customer service attitude and professional knowledge tourism.

In addition, the tourism industry has also maintained the e-learning website daotaodulichdanang.com with 20 free online training courses, five field survey programmes on new tourist attractions and tourism products in Da Nang and coordinated with the Tourism Association and member associations to organise programmes to improve the quality of tourism human resources, continue to propagate and deploy professional standards in serving tourists, coordinate with universities to organise job fairs and career guidance to attract human resources.

Information from the Da Nang Department of Tourism, in the first 9 months of 2023, a total of 50,700 workers worked in in the tourism sector, an increase of 43.6% (equivalent to an increase of 15,394 people), compared to the same period in 2022 and an increase of 16. 2% compared to the same period in 2019 (corresponding to an increase of 7,086 people).

In detail, there were about 25,200 workers at tourist accommodation establishments, up by 2.86% compared to 2022 and up by 13.9% compared to 2019. The total number of trained tourism workers in many forms accounted for 65% and a proportion of workers possessing foreign language certificates reached 40%...

Reporting by THU HA – Translating by A.THU