Stakeholders to beef up tourism workforce via course revamp

CEBU, Philippines - As tourism is considered a strong platform to strengthen the country’s inclusive growth bid, the sector’s stakeholders and prime movers are now making efforts to further improve the quality of workforce the industry needs.

National Association of Independent Travel Agencies (NAITAS) chairman Bobby Lim Joseph announced that together with other tourism organizations, an initiative to collaborate with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) will be started to produce better quality students in tourism related courses like the Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM).

The initiative will be carried out in partnership with Team-Philippines or the Tourism Educators and Movers, Hotel Restaurants, Resorts Association in the Philippines and the chamber of commerce organizations.

TEAM-Philippines will lead in the review of curriculum in all the tourism related courses, including vocational programs, to enhance the quality of workforce in the industry.

“We also would like to engage the chamber of commerce organizations in the country to help us provide a relevant educational program for the tourism sector. We need this especially that we are facing another challenge come the ASEAN integration in 2015,” Joseph said in an interview.

At present, many of the HRM and other related course graduates are not hirable and hotels and other establishments still have to invest sizeable amount and time for training, he said.

Earlier, Department of Tourism (DOT) undersecretary for tourism planning and promotions Daniel G. Corpuz said that the department is closely working with the CHED in order to improve the course curriculum of courses that are related to tourism and accommodation services like HRM.

Corpuz said that the Philippine government, through the tourism department and in collaboration with CHED, hopes to bring down the mismatch in the tourism sector between the academe and the industry players.

Currently, there is a total of 685 universities and colleges that are offering accommodation tourism related courses and only about three-fourths of the annual graduates are absorbed by the industry players.

With the promising outlook for tourism in the Philippines, Corpuz said DOT is also trying to strengthen the supply of manpower in the sector, including the introduction of several programs that are geared towards developing a good “culture of tourism” in the country.

Aside from improving the existing curriculum of tourism related courses, Corpuz said DOT is also planning to work with CHED in terms of adding the number of hours in the on-the-job training requirement of the near-graduates.

He said from 300 hours which is now the usual requirement based on CHED regulation, DOT wants to increase the OJT or practicum training hours to 500.

Likewise, DOT also plans to initiate a tie-up with major educational institutions in introducing its program to improve the curriculum of tourism related courses.               

Requiring students to take up courses in foreign languages is also part of the plan as having multilingual personnel in the tourism sector is considered very important nowadays.

The strengthening of the educational system in the tourism related courses is only one part of the department’s broad program in establishing a strong foundation of tourism manpower and support services in the country.

Part of this also is to push the strong development of “culture of tourism” among residents from urban centers to the countryside areas.

Because of this, the local government units (LGUs) are also asked to formulate their own local tourism plan, Corpuz added.

According to Corpuz, the department’s focus now is spread to different angels in the tourism sector, not only to push aggressive marketing campaign here and abroad, but also more developmental programs that will complement the need for improvement in tourism services, culture of tourism among residents, infrastructure and quality supply of personnel, among others.

 This is why he said the DOT will need the help of other agencies in the government in pushing tourism as one of the country’s economic “bread winners”.

By 2014, about 800 hotel and resort rooms will be added in the different tourism destinations in the Philippines. These facilities will need considerable number of “quality” manpower.

Also, the issue of sanitation and safety has to be addressed seriously by the LGUs and should be part of their local tourism plan roadmap, he said.

DOT is now working with different government agencies in order to address the concerns that largely affect tourism sector in the country, including its active partnership with the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC), Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), among others.

DOT is confident that the Philippines will achieve its targets in the next four years to hit 10 million tourist arrivals by 2016, not only because of the active participation of the private sector, but also the new branding campaign of the Philippines, which has attracted participation from ordinary Filipino citizens and those that are based in other countries. /JMD (FREEMAN)