According to statistics from the General Department of Tourism, the tourism industry needs nearly 40,000 more workers each year, but the number of students and graduates in the field is only about 15,000 people per year. Of which, only over 12% have college or university degrees or higher.
Of the 1.3 million tourism workers nationwide, only 42% are trained in tourism, 38% are transferred from other industries and about 20% have not received formal training.
Vietnam's tourism industry is in the development stage but is seriously lacking in human resources.
According to the report of the National Tourism Administration, it is expected that by 2025 Vietnam will welcome about 18 million international visitors, requiring about 5.5 million workers. This will be both an opportunity and a challenge for those pursuing this field.
Not only is there a shortage, the tourism industry is also considered to have poor expertise. According to information from the General Department of Tourism, the labor productivity of the tourism industry in Vietnam is among the lowest in the region, reaching 3,477 USD/year/person, less than half that of Thailand and only 1/15 of that of Singapore.
Thus, from the reality, there exists a large gap between the supply and demand for training of professional and high-quality tourism human resources, especially to meet the requirements of rapid growth in the context of increasing regional and international competition of the tourism industry. This gap is not simply about quantity but more importantly about quality and labor productivity.
Tourism human resources play a decisive role in tourism development.
It can be seen that tourism human resources play a decisive role not only for tourism development, but also contribute significantly to the industrialization and modernization of the country. Therefore, developing human resources in the tourism industry to meet the requirements of rapid and sustainable tourism development, truly becoming a spearhead economic sector, contributing more positively and effectively to the cause of industrialization, modernization and development of the knowledge economy of the country is a necessary task, stemming from the requirements of reality.
