The Empire Group along with some universities and colleges in Da Nang, on Tuesday, inked an agreement on manpower training in the hospitality sector to meet the demand for 10,000 jobs by 2020.

The signing ceremony in progress— VNS Photo Cong Thanh

It is one of the largest cooperation deals on human resources training between a hospitality group and local educational centres.

Under the plan, 5 universities and colleges, including the Da Nang University of Economics, the Dong A and Duy Tan universities, Pegasus College and Viet Nam-Australia College will start practical educational programmes on tourism services with support from the Empire Group.

Vice Director of the city’s Tourism Department, Nguyen Xuan Binh, noted that the city’s hospitality sector would face a deficiency of skilled manpower by 2020 when it would need 27,000 employees at local hotels and resorts.  Binh said that number rooms of hotel and resort projects would increase from 26,000 to 62,000 by 2030.

The city’s hospitality sector currently employs 14,000 people, and 40% of them skilled.  The 12 colleges and vocational centres in the region can only train around 5,000 students a year.

Deputy General Director of Empire Group, Trinh Viet Hung, remarked that the group committed to employing qualified local human resources from the tourism training centres.

The hospitality group will employ 2,000 workers at the $622million CocoBay project – the first entertainment-hospitality complex in the central region – between July and September this year.

“We plans to employ 10,000 skilled labourers at hotel resort and entertainment centres at the CocoBay complex in 2020,” Hung said, adding that the agreement would help boost high-quality human resource training system in the city.

The Empire Group has also signed a strategy cooperation deal with Dream Hotel Group of the US and Louvre Hotels Group of France for Empire hospitality management in Viet Nam.

Da Nang welcomed 5.6 million tourists last year, and 1.67 million of them were foreigners.  To date, the city has developed 16 tourist property projects, consisting of 749 villas, of which 609 are for sale and 140 for lease.

(Source: VNS/ DA NANG Today)