Develop tourism human resource for da nang in the context of international integration

Nội dung text: Develop tourism human resource for da nang in the context of international integration

1. HUFLIT International Conference On Ensuring A High-Quality Human Resource In The Modern Age – Oct 16, 2020 doi: 10.15625/vap.2020.0096 DEVELOP TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCE FOR DA NANG IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION Do Thi Hang Nga University of Economics - The University of Da Nang hangngadn@gmail.com, ngadth@due.edu.vn ABSTRACT: Da Nang city has plenty of potentiality and conditions for tourism development. In fact, tourism industry of the city has been growing rapidly and strongly over the years, which is an important contribution to change the city appearance, to solve employment problem, increase income for enterprises and local people, offering good donation to the city budget. However, facing the development requirement of tourism industry and the trend of international integration, so many issues of developing human resource in tourism industry of the city should be discussed, because the investment to human resource has not meet the requirement yet. Therefore, in order to carry out socio-economic development target to 2030 and vision to 2045, determining that tourism is one of the three key factors in socio-economic development, Da Nang city should do more improvement to the tourism human resource. This article is to focus on analyzing, evaluating the quality of tourism human resource of the city, and by this way, to propose some solutions to develop tourism human resource of the city in future. Keywords: Tourism, human resources, tourism human resource, Da Nang. I. INTRODUCTION In current condition of international integration, while service industry is more and more growing, tourism is considered as an important economic sector to develop the economy. The Resolution No. 08-NQ/TW of Political Bureau dated on 16 Jan 2017 has stated that, in 2020, tourism industry basically becomes a key economic sector, motivating socio-economic development. Tourism is quite a special economic sector, having the properties of both business and social service, satisfying physical and mental demand of human beings. Therefore, tourism human resource plays an important role, which should be met more and more in quantity, quality and professional skills to serve tourists from different languages and culture. Moreover, tourism human resource is also important for effectively discovering and maintaining tourism potentiality of the country for a long time, creating typical, qualified, and attractive tourism products. This team also shows the ability of acquiring international tourism experiences, as well as the ability of participating in international tourism integration. For this reason, developing tourism human resource is a particularly important issue for the development of each nation, each locality Da Nang is the top tourism centre of the Central, having the target of developing tourism to be one of the key economic sectors which takes a good proportion in economic structure of the city, resulting in developing some other economic sectors, contributing to the move towards “services – industry, construction – agriculture”. Over the years, being noticed by the city leaders, tourism industry of Da Nang has grown rather quickly in terms of infrastructure serving for tourism, accordingly, employees working in tourism are increasing in both quality and quantity. Nevertheless, facing the development requirement of tourism industry and the trend of international integration, there are so many issues of developing local tourism human resource. In fact, the main human resource being used for current tourism industry of the city is still weak and shortage. Most of them are from other different sectors, which is impossible to satisfy the development requirement. Therefore, they should be educated and trained professionally. In addition, having plan of improving human resource to satisfy development requirement in new period should be a mission and solution in the strategy of socio-economic development of Da Nang city in future. II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Role of developing human resource in tourism industry Human resource is an important source to the socio-economic development of our country in general and of tourism in particular. Its role is described in following aspects: Human resource development decides the development of other resources. In economic generally and in tourism particularly, comparing to other resources, human resource plays an outstanding role because it is not run out during the process of exploiting and using. On the contrary, it has the ability of renewal and improvement if being used effectively. Considering tourism human resource, it can be seen that tourism requires a huge number of human resource with different levels because it has low mechanization and diverse demands of customers. As a result, human resource development is also the development of tourism human resource. Tourism human resource has the role of turning tourism development source from potential form into reality which is increasingly confirmed. Tourism human resource team is responsible for predicting, creating, leading and guiding the community to be a force which can create new tourism values. Tourism human resource team must be the pioneer force, helping and instructing local people in understanding and applying science and technology into their works; staying close
2. 288 DEVELOP TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCE FOR DA NANG IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION to real life, actively taking part in poverty reduction, job creating, intellectual and physical enhancement for the people, enriching people, facilitating integration, contributing to building a society of healthy, democracy, fairness, and civilization. Tourism human resource gives a big decision to the business performance of tourism companies. In tourism industry, comments on service quality of customers are usually under great influences from the communication between them and service staffs. Each movement, action, or words of a staff might bring customers a feeling and/ or comment on their service quality. Human resource can develop tourism in the age of science – technology and globalization. The scientific technological revolution has created a strong and rapid development in all aspects of socio-economic life, along with the globalization process that has created favorable conditions and opportunities for countries to develop sectors, in which tourism is considered the most potential “smokeless industry”. The modern scientific and technological revolution has brought satisfaction of customers’ consumer needs such as standards of bedrooms, transportation services, facilities Tourism human resource takes the pioneer role in creating tourism values of the international labour distribution chain in the context of increasingly deep and comprehensive international integration. Tourism individuals and human resource team themselves are both the subjects to gather and improve national strength, and the objects to receive and improve elite and advanced experience in tourism development of the world for sustainable tourism development. In short, it is very important to have full awareness of the importance of labours in practical activities of tourism, good investment and concern to human resource work. The issue for tourism is to attract and keep qualified, talent employees with proper working attitude, to choose right persons to meet customers’ demand. Tourism agencies, that wish to survive and develop in this increasingly intense and competitive condition, should be more aware of the role of human resource development, especially direct human resource, at the same time, should do human resource management well, developing tourism human resource in order to create appropriate policies and strategies on time. In any field, human factor is always the critical role to success. B. Da Nang develops tourism human resource in the context international integration 1. Situation of tourism human resource development in Da Nang city Da Nang city has a lot of potentiality and good conditions to develop tourism. With the advantages of sea ports and international airport, being the gate of going to and coming from Central world heritages, together with rich and diverse tourism resources, beautiful beaches, infrastructure for tourism that is quite synchronous, secure tourism environment, Da Nang has been becoming a safe, friendly destination for many tourists During the past years, the city tourism industry has achieved some positive results, contributing an important part to the socio-economic development of Da Nang city. The number of tourists coming to Da Nang city has increased significantly. The average increase rate of annual guesses in the period of 2011-2017 reached 20.97 %, including 28.65 % of international tourists. In 2018, total number of visitors and tourists coming to Da Nang reached is 7,660 thousand, increasing 15.5 % compared to 2017; of which international guesses reached 2,875 thousand and domestic guesses reached 4,785 thousand. Total income from tourism was 24,067 billion, increasing 23.3 % over the same period in 2017. As of March 2019, in Da Nang city there are 793 tourist accommodations with 35,881 rooms; 331 tour operation agencies; 09 tourist destinations; over 3,300 tourist transport vehicles. Within this result, the contribution of tourism HR is the decisive factor to the quality of tourism service. Tourism in Da Nang is oriented to develop in 4 main groups: sea tourism, luxury resorts; tourism for shopping, entertainment, MICE; tourism for culture, history, spirit, ecology, villages, and handicraft villages; urban tourism together with the central city of the whole area. The city has made specific plan for each year on the work of developing tourism human resource, such as conducting surveys, assessments, offering courses of training and developing tourism human resource, enhancing the cooperation and coordination between relevant sectors and organizations in human resource development By this way, the work of tourism human resource development of the city has achieved important results, particularly: - On structure of tourism human resource: during the past time, human resource for tourism business has been increasing quickly in number. There was 50,963 persons by November 2019, increasing 41.9 % compared to the data of 2017. The number of employees working in accommodation establishments has biggest rate, accounting for over half of tourism human resource of the city (55.5 %) and increasing 63.1 % from the data of 2017. The main reason is the strong growth in the number of hotels, especially in high-class segment1. Employees in restaurants and tour guides also takes high rates (16.7 % and 9.1 %). The number of tour guides was 4,646 (increasing 44.2 % from 2017), of which there were 1,279 domestic tour guides and 3,367 international tour guides. Teachers at tourism education facilities and state tourism managers take smaller rate (1 % and 0.5 %). 1 Number of rooms in hotels in 2019 has increased 40.6 % in comparison to the number of 2017, in which 3-5-star hotels has increased 53.8 % and 1-2-star hotels has increased 28.5 %.
3. Do Thi Hang Nga 289 Table 1. Number of tourism human resource in Da Nang in 2019 (Source: Da Nang Department of Tourism 2019) Object Number of employees Rate Accommodations 28.272 55.5 % Tour operation agencies 1.848 3.6 % Tourist transport companies and boats 3.042 6.0 % Tourist destinations 2.044 4.0 % Standard shopping facilities 1.830 3.6 % Restaurants 8.490 16.7 % Tour guides 4.646 9.1 % Teachers at tourism education facilities 519 1.0 % State management bodies on tourism 272 0.5 % Total 50.963 100 % The demand of tourism human resource of the city is increasing. The number of employees is expected to increase up to 85,007 persons in 2025 (increasing 66.8 % compared to 2019), and about 115,982 persons in 2030 (increasing 127.6 % from 2019). Of which, the largest growth is the number of employees working in accommodation establishments (expected to be 66,754 persons in 2030), lower is the number of restaurant staffs and tour guides (expected to be 18,494 and 12,311 persons in 2030). Table 2. Estimate of tourism human resource in Da Nang in 2030 (Source: Da Nang Department of Tourism 2019) 2017 2018 2019 2020* 2021* 2025* 2030* Accommodation 17.334 21.246 28.272 31.786 35.283 49.270 66.754 Tour operation agencies 1.405 1.605 1.848 1.991 2.147 2.933 4.026 Tourist transport companies 2.312 3.025 3.042 3.277 3.534 4.828 6.627 and boats Tourist destinations 2.174 2.450 2.044 2.146 2.253 2.739 3.496 Standard shopping facilities 1.402 1.670 1.830 1.922 2.018 2.453 3.131 Restaurants 7.140 7.480 8.490 9.146 9.863 13.473 18.494 Tour guides 3.223 4.161 4.646 5.114 5.634 8.360 12.311 Teachers at tourism education 653 670 519 545 572 695 887 facilities State management bodies on 278 278 272 269 256 256 256 tourism Total 35.921 42.585 50.963 56.196 61.560 85.007 115.982 - Age structure is also improved to be suitable with the work property. Chart 1 below shows that the number of employees working in tourism agencies in the age of 25-45 takes largest rate, at 57 %. Rate of labours under 25 is 32.1 %. Rate of labours over 45 is only 10.8 %. Generally, labours at surveyed companies are quite young. The advantages of young labours is that they are active, easy to offer training, and adaptable. However, the disadvantage is that they are less experiences, easy to skip their jobs, and not attach to their companies. - Professional skills and ability of human resource: Current human resource team working in tourism in the city today has made some significant change, renewal, improvement in their professional skills, gradually meeting the requirements of tourism business activities under market mechanism. At present, more and more domestic and foreign joint-venture enterprises have applied advanced human resource management models, well done works of selecting, training and using human resource who are qualified, well-trained, serious working attitude, professional knowledge and skills, well satisfying the work demands. Particularly: rate of tourism employees at enterprises in the city who were trained in tourism reached 75.4 %. Of which, rate of college, university and post-graduate employees is 28 %; 29.5 % employees have vocational training, primary training or short-term training courses; 17.9 % employees are trained by self-training courses of the companies. Un-educated rate in tourism takes 24.6 %.
4. 290 DEVELOP TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCE FOR DA NANG IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION Over the past years, Department of tourism has cooperated with training units, management to inspect and issue practical certificate VTOS2, especially to tour guides, who are asked to strictly observe the law during the process of guiding visitors. 46-60 years Over 60 years old, old, 8.3 % 2.4 % Under 25 years old, 32.1 % 25-45 years old 57.2% Chart 1. Human resource according to ages (Source: Da Nang Department of Tourism 2019) Table 3. Tourism education level of human resource (Source: Da Nang Department of Tourism 2019) Tourism education level Rate Post-graduate 1.8 % University 12.4 % College 13.8 % Vocational school 7.4 % Occupational elementary (3-6 months) 11.6 % Short-term training (under 3 months) 6.0 % VTOS professional certificate 3.5 % VTOS trainer certificate 0.9 % Confirmation on self-training by enterprises 17.9 % Not-educated in tourism 24.6 % Total 100 % Table 4. Foreign language certificate of human resource (Source: Da Nang Department of Tourism 2019) Rate Foreign language English with IELTS/TOEFL/Cambridge3 certificate 6.2 % English with TOEIC4 10.4 % Domestic certificate (B1, B2, C1 ) 24.0 % Chinese 3.4 % Korean 1.4 % Other languages (Thai, French, Russian, Germany) 0.9 % No foreign language 53.7 % Total 100 % - Foreign language skills: the data of staffs with foreign language certificate at tourism enterprises shows that up to 53.7 % staffs is not trained in foreign language officially. Staffs with ability of English accounts most rate (40.6 %); of which 6.2 % has international English certificate, 10.4 % has TOEIC certificate, and 24 % has domestic English certificate. The 2 Vietnam tourism occupational skills standards are criteria to perform works, to achieve necessary knowledge and skills to perform works effectively 3 International certificates which assesses 4 skills: Listening Speaking, Reading, and Writing 4 2 skills assessed only
5. Do Thi Hang Nga 291 number of staffs who know Chinese takes 3.3 %, Korean 12 %, and other foreign language (French, Germany ) 0.7 %. - Prediction on tourism human resource: from the results so far, tourism human resource prediction model of the city for next years has been built basing on information provided by Department of tourism and related units, as follows: Annual growth rate of international and domestic guesses from 2020 to 2025 is 12 % and 5 % per year, equivalent to the growth rate of total tourists from 7.7 % to 8.1 %/ year. This is the average rate of tourists coming to Southeast Asian countries. Annual growth rate of international and domestic guesses from 2026 to 2030 decreases to 9 % and 4 % per year, equivalent to the growth rate of total tourists at 6.5 %/year. Number of international and domestic tour guides increases according to the growth rate of international and domestic guesses. Total accommodation rooms increase to 5,000 rooms/ year. 67 % of total rooms are at 3-5-star hotels or relevant accommodations, 33 % at 1-2-star hotels or relevant ones. Number of hotel staffs increases according to the increase of rooms. Number of staffs working for tour operation companies, transportation, restaurants increases according to the growth under total tourists. Number of staffs working at tourist destinations, shopping facilities, and number of teachers at training facilities increases 5 %/ year. 2. General evaluation on tourism human resource development in Da Nang city During the past years, with the concern of city leaders, the work of developing tourism human resource has had several important achievements: State management human resource and tourism career units has increased in both quantity and quality, which has improved the ability of implementing tourism development policy of the Party and the State. Human resource directly doing tourism business has a quick development in both quantity and quality, reflecting the increasing role of the industry and the effectiveness of tourism socialization. The rate of labours who are trained, working in right jobs, and the rate of labours who are re-trained, or labours with professional experiences and foreign language skills tends to increase. More and more enterprises use advanced human resource management models, well done works of selecting, training and using and maintaining human resource. Tourism and services companies are firstly aware of the importance of human resource, focusing on educating and training under group standards, supporting expenditures for their staffs to take part in professional training courses. The cooperation between tourism agencies and educational facilities is promoted. Educational facilities with many orders to offer training to companies are Da Nang Univeristy of Economics, Duy Tan University, Vietnamese Australian Vocational College, Da Nang Vocational Tourism College Training quality of the educational facilities has been modified and improved by applying VTOS educational frame, ASEAN curriculum; increasing probation time and inspection of internship quality as a foundation to consider students’ graduation; inviting head of departments from 5-star resorts, tour directors, experienced tour guides to share their information about tourism and working environment; organizing outdoor activities, field trips to resorts, hotels, routes. Some schools record the internship time of students to consider their graduation result. This connection in training has met the demand of enterprises in quality and quantity, then the educated students can be recruited right after graduation. - Shortcomings: In generals, tourism labour force in Da Nang is plentiful but still limited, inadequate, and also in the situation of both redundance and shortage, impossible to meet requirements of each job. There is still a high rate of labour without knowing foreign languages. The stability of labour directly serving tourism has not been fulfilled. Not many tourism human resource have good professional education, resulting to low performance, poor skills of communication, solving problems, customer care, and foreign languages. Salary and bonus, as well as labour disciplines in several enterprises are not a motivation to employees. Education is not paid much concern, training courses does not focus on practice and are not close to enterprises, failing in satisfying enterprises’ needs, and enterprises do not pay much attention to education. Current educational system in Da Nang has 20 units offering tourism training, but only Da Nang Vocational Tourism College is specialized in tourism, others just have tourism faculty. However, because the Tourism College has just been established, it still has a lot of difficulties in facilities, resulting to failure in providing tourism labour for the city. Training content of tourism vocational facilities in the area still spends much time on theory. Graduates do not have much practical experiences, spend little time for internship and only have a certain time for internship, which is inconvenient for enterprises to accept them. The qualification of teachers is uneven, their level of foreign language, expertise, and especially practical experience of working in companies is not much - Reasons of the shortcomings: the concern of the city to tourism human resource development has not been turned into specific strategy, plan or program. Thinking, awareness and action in management and operation are still limited within
6. 292 DEVELOP TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCE FOR DA NANG IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION market mechanism; investment to programs and activities of human resource development is still inadequate. Quick development in number of tourism projects and tourist accommodations has caused huge demand of recruiting labours, specially experienced ones. Employees are still thinking that tourism is not an important job in this society, they work temporary without staying for long time, resulting to working without enthusiasm and need of improving their professional skills. human resource education has not been appropriately invested; enterprises neither have specific strategy of developing human resource, nor pay much attention to train their staffs; and tourism standards are issued slowly. III. SOME SOLUTIONS OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CITY IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION Nowadays, globalization and international integration is more and more deep and comprehensive. Tourism industry of Vietnam in general and Da Nang city in particular has both opportunities and challenges during the process of development, with the mechanism of cooperation and competition. In such situation, human resource with good knowledge, good professional skills and good conscience has become the most important factor, determining the development of tourism industry. Therefore, the city should pay more attention to tourism human resource development. From such demand, we would like to propose some urgent solutions for Da Nang city to develop tourism human resource in the coming time, particularly: - Firstly, complete and issue policies of tourism human resource development: State management body on tourism should complete policies, mechanism of managing and supporting tourism human resource development; establish and issue criteria of professional management titles, creating a basis for training and using human resource suitable with requirements of tourism development and international integration; improve policies of encouraging tourism human resource development focusing on managers, tour guides ; should have policies to attract domestic and international experts; invest to the work of training human resource in general and tourism human resource in particular. Establish and issue policies of labour recruitment and training on tourism for employees; regularly organize training courses to improve the awareness of tourism for leaders of sectors and localities; study to develop community-based tourism in the direction of making survey, studying the market, creating products that are suitable with local features and tourism infrastructure of the city; raise budget for the work of training human resource for developing community-based tourism. - Secondly, continue to build up and complete tourism human resource development strategy: The city should build up a database of tourism human resource information, including current human resource situation and prediction of tourism human resource development need in the coming time. Specially, it should renew and well do the work of forecasting tourism labour supply – demand in the area, which specifies the number, titles, standards, and expected time of recruitment. Doing this well will provide information to state management bodies, training facilities, tourism enterprises and organizations and individuals in need, then they can have appropriate plan to develop human resource for tourism industry. - Thirdly, improve quality of tourism human resource: Improving quality of labours in tourism industry. Reviewing, offering re-training courses, training courses to improve professional skills, communication skills, behaviours, skills of solving problems and customer care, foreign languages Regarding to enterprises, performance should be assessed under Vietnamese tourism occupational standards (VTOS), including: personal skills, working skills, performance. After assessment, it is necessary to classify employees to see if they are appropriate or not, then having plan to train, transfer or dismiss. There should be policies of award – purnish, salary standard and discipline, improving working conditions, establishing business cultural environment, democracy and collective mind. Regarding to educational program: Improve professional features and practicality in educational programs; giving priority to some suitable occupation, at the same time diversify and renew educational programs in the direction of offering programs appropriate with real demands. On the other hand, training facilities should constantly update new trend of world tourism development; pay attention to renew programs in the direction of international integration, along with occupational standard training programs (VTOS, ASEAN mutual recognition arrangement on tourism professionals MRA- TP); focus on teaching theory and practice at the same time, improve requirement of professional skills, skills of problem solving and communication fluently in foreign language; focus on career orientation for students to access information and have suitable orientation early. In addition, improve quantity and quality of teachers; increase equipment and facilities for teaching and studying; and having activities to support students. - Fourthly, attract and recruit officials, students and employees qualified in tourism from other areas to work in the city, especially those who work in marketing, market promotion, tourism advertisement, hosting tourist events, with appropriate remuneration This is to ensure the human resource for the requirements and tasks in the coming time. It is necessary to identify the need of attracting for each specific period. Making database of tourism human resource, renewing current procedures of attracting human resource under direction of “seeking and hunting candidates”, sharing qualified human resource of the city to enterprises, issuing policies of using qualified human resource and having typical mechanism for such human resource.
7. Do Thi Hang Nga 293 - Fifthly, international cooperation in tourism training: The city should offer favourable conditions for tourism training facilities to connect, cooperate, and exchange training technologies to famous foreign university; coordinate to improve teaching skills for teachers, taking the advantages of supports from foreign governmental and non-governmental organizations through aid programs to improve facilities, equipment, and improve teaching skills for teachers. IV. CONCLUSIONS Over the past time, tourism industry of Da Nang city has been growing and become a top economic sector of the city, thanks to specific programs and plan of training and developing tourism human resource of the city. However, apart from such achievements, there are still shortcomings in the work of training and developing tourism human resource, failing in meeting requirements. For Da Nang city to have strong tourism human resource in terms of both quantity and quality in order to satisfy the integration trend, in the coming time, the city should have a close cooperation between departments in supporting and orienting information, development demand of tourism industry so that the task of developing tourism human resource in Da Nang. V. REFERENCES [1] Vietnam Communist Party (2017). Resolution 08-NQ/TW of the Politburo on tourism development to become a key economic sector, issued on January 16. [2] Vietnam Communist Party (2019). Resolution 43-NQ/TW of the Politburo on building and developing Da Nang City until 2030 with a vision to 2045, issued on January 24. [3] People's Committee of Da Nang City- Department of Tourism (2019). Plan: Danang tourism human resources in 2019. [4] People’s Committee of Da Nang City - Department of Tourism (2017). “Survey report on tourism human resources in Da Nang in 2017”. [5] People’s Committee of Da Nang City - Department of Tourism (2019). “Survey report on tourism human resources in Da Nang in 2019”. [6] Website of Da Nang Tourism Department: