Tourism human resource development in context of the fourth industrial revolution - Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Thực phẩm Tp. Hồ Chí Minh

Bạn đang xem bản rút gọn của tài liệu. Xem và tải ngay bản đầy đủ của tài liệu tại đây (276.83 KB, 5 trang )

(1)<div class='page_container' data-page=1>

TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN

CON-TEXT OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Nguyen Thi Thu Mai, Nguyen Thi Thuyet*

Hoang Duy Anh†

Date received the article: 2/4/2020
Date received the review results: 5/10/2020

Date published the article: 26/10/2020

Abstract: The explosion of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 not only brings opportunities 
but also creates great challenges for Vietnam’s tourism industry, especially in developing 
hu-man resources to meet the needs of the tourist market. On the basis of assessing the current 
situation of Vietnamese human resources and analyzing some of the eﬀ ects of Industry 4.0 
on the tourism sector, the article points out some requirements for the development of human 
resources in tourism, that is: Raising awareness of Industry 4.0 and new requirements on 
the capability of the workforce in the tourism sector to actively study and innovate; 
Com-pleting guidelines, policies, adjusting planning for human resource development in tourism; 
Improving training capacity, improving the quality of human resource training for tourism 
in training institutions; Improving technological infrastructure and information system of 
the tourism industry; and promoting international cooperation, strengthening public-private 
cooperation in tourism human resource development.

Keywords: Developing human, tourism, industry 4.0

* Faculty of Tourism - Hanoi Open University
† Vietnam National University, Hanoi

1. Introduction

Over the past years, with its
remark-able growth rate, tourism has shown a
“spearhead” role in the country’s
econo-my. From 2015-2019, the number of
tour-ists has gradually increased each year -
number of international visitors increased
8.4 times, reaching over 18 million
arriv-als; Domestic tourists tripled, reaching
85 million arrivals in 2019. Total revenue
from tourists reached 32.8 billion USD in
2019, an increase of 7.9 times compared
to 2015, directly contributing 9.2% into

</div>
(2)<div class='page_container' data-page=2>

2. The development context and 
impacts of the industrial revolution on 
the tourism industry

Being identifi ed as a key
econom-ic sector, in recent years, tourism has
re-ceived great attention from the Party and
the State. Tourism development has been
identifi ed as the responsibility of the
en-tire political system, all levels, sectors
and the whole society, and many policies
have been enacted to facilitate tourism
in general, tourism and human
resourc-es in particular. Rresourc-esolution No. 08-NQ /
TW dated January 16, 2017 of the
Minis-try of Finance on “Develop tourism into

a key economic sector” also outlines the
tasks and solutions for tourism
develop-ment, in which the emphasis is made on
the need to develop human resources in
terms of quantity and quality. The
resolu-tion clearly stated: “Promote the
applica-tion of advanced science and technology
in training and fostering tourism human
resource development” and “improve the
quality of human resources in both state
governance, corporate management and
labor in tourism”. In addition, in the
wide-spread context of the Industry 4.0 tide, the
Prime Minister has issued Directive No.
16 / CT-TTg on strengthening the ability
to access the Industry 4.0, and has directed
the implementation of measures to make
the most of the advantages, while
mini-mizing the negative eﬀ ects of the Industry
4.0 on Vietnam, in which the mission for
the tourism industry was set: “Proactively
review, build plans and key tasks of the
industry to implement in accordance with
the development trend of the 4th
Industri-al Revolution”.

As the convergence of a series of
new technologies, based on the platform
of connection and digital technology

ap-plied in all areas of life, Industry 4.0 has
quickly had a profound impact on all areas
of socio-economic life, tourism included.
The internet of things can be applied in
ac-commodation and dining services such as:
creating smart rooms - self-adjusting
tem-perature, lighting, automatic equipment
in the room. ; predictive failure detection
of the service equipment system; food
in-ventory tracking and management ...
Ar-tifi cial intelligence (AI) can be used as a
virtual assistant to provide information,
take care of tourists, resolve complaints,
book automatically ... to increase the
qual-ity of the experience and save time for
guests. Big data can be used in analyzing
and selecting target markets, even helping
businesses personalize each travel product
and service to perfectly meet the needs of
travelers.

The new technologies of Industry
4.0 applied in the tourism fi eld will create
a lot of changes in the method of
manage-ment, business, consumption and
associ-ated with new requirements on qualifi
ca-tions, skills and qualities of the workforce
in the tourism industry. Industry 4.0 will
change the needs and approaches to
tour-ism of the tourist market; change some

employment positions in the tourism
in-dustry; and alter some professional
stan-dards in the tourism industry.

Industry 4.0 changes the needs and 
approaches toward tourism of the tourist 
market:

</div>
(3)<div class='page_container' data-page=3>

a global scale at lower costs. Travel
hab-its, travel behaviors, travel time ... can all
change. At the same time, the increasing
demand for personalization in tourism
products will force the tourism industry
and its workforce to actively change in
response.

Industry 4.0 changes a number of 
job positions in the tourism industry:

The results of applying new
tech-nologies in the tourism industry have
formed new tourism trends such as smart
travel, virtual reality travel ... thereby
cre-ating new job positions such as marketing
staﬀ , online sales, consulting and online
customer care, online dât analyzing and
processing ... Meanwhile, some steps in
the process of “manufacturing” tourism
products and services will be gradually
replaced by smart, automated robots such

as picking up, ticket checking, luggage
transportation, automatic payment
assis-tance, security protection ... so some
pub-lic may be lost. Namely work such as
tick-et conductors, tour guides, tourist advice
and care, security staﬀ ...

Industry 4.0 changes a number of 
profession standards in the tourism 
in-dustry:

The increasingly popular
appli-cation of technology in work as well as
the emergence of new career positions
requires the workforce in the industry to
have the qualifi cations and skills to use
the technologies associated with each
specifi c career position. Therefore, the
standards of many professional positions
will inevitably change, in accordance
with the requirements of the new
situa-tion, with the actual application of
tech-nology in specifi c job positions. In this
context, high-quality tourism human
re-sources will become a decisive factor in

competition and ensure success in
tour-ism operation, management and business.
3. The situation of human 
resourc-es in tourism

Tourism human resources can be
understood as the entire direct or indirect
workforce with suﬃ cient qualifi cations
and conditions to work in the tourism
sector. The growth of Vietnam’s tourism
along with the new requirements posed
by Industry 4.0 for the tourism industry
requires the industry to have a human
resource that ensures both quantity and
quality. However, the reality shows that
tourism human resources are lacking in
quantity and poor in quality.

The shortage of tourism human 
re-sources:

According to the Institute for
Re-search and Development of Tourism, with
the same growth rate as the previous time,
it is estimated that each year the tourism
industry needs about 40,000 more
work-ers. In 2018, the whole country had 195
training institutions in tourism, of which
there were 80 universities but could only
supply about 15,000 employees per year.
The demand for human resources
operat-ing in the tourism industry increased by an
average of about 40% per year, of which,
the demand for workers with university

and college degrees accounts for 15%.
Also according to the forecasts from this
Institute, by 2025, Vietnam Tourism will
need to add 620,000 workers, and by 2025
2,090,000 more.

Quality of human resources for 
tourism:

</div>
(4)<div class='page_container' data-page=4>

index was only 4.8 points, ranked 47th /
140 countries, in the group above average
in the world and only higher than Laos
and Cambodia in the ASEAN region. The
ICT readiness index was only 4.3 points,
ranked 83/140, in the low average group
(WEF, 2019). In the ASEAN region, these
rankings are just ahead of Laos and
Cam-bodia. The ranking indicators refl ect quite
accurately the current state of the quality
of tourism human resources in Vietnam.
According to statistics from the Institute
of Tourism Research and Development,
the proportion of workers trained with
ex-pertise in tourism accounts for only 42%
of the total number of direct workers in
the industry, 38% of workers are from
other industries. and about 20% only
re-ceive on-the-job training without formal
training. Of the workers trained in
tour-ism, only 10% have university and

post-graduate degrees, 50% have elementary
to intermediate education and 40% only
receive training through short classes.
term. Regarding the foreign language
lev-el of tourism human resources, the whole
industry has about 60% of tourism
work-ers know and can use foreign languages,
but only 15% can use them fl uently.
Re-garding the level of technology, the whole
industry has about 60% of the employees
capable of using computers and
equip-ment for work, but mainly associated with
simple jobs (Nguyen Van Dinh, 2019).

Thus, it can be seen that the
tour-ism human resource still lacks in quantity
and still has many limitations in terms of
quality. Therefore in the face of the rapid
development of tourism and the impacts
of the new technology wave around the
world, it is very urgent to actively improve
tourism human resources in both quantity
and quality.

4. Some requirements for the 
de-velopment of tourism human resources

First, raising awareness of Industry 
4.0 and new requirements on the 
capabili-ty of the workforce in the tourism sector to

actively study and innovate:

The workforce in the entire
indus-try must be properly aware of Indusindus-try 4.0
and of the impacts of new technologies
on the tourism industry and on each job
position. As a result, each person working
in the industry should be proactive and
make eﬀ orts in learning and innovating,
improving knowledge, professional
qual-ifi cations, professional skills, and ability
to use new technologies. Accordingly,
re-newing thinking and working methods to
adapt to new requirements, and to ensure
labor eﬃ ciency.

Second, perfecting policies, 
adjust-ing plannadjust-ing for human resource 
develop-ment in tourism to the new situation:

</div>
(5)<div class='page_container' data-page=5>

Third, improving quality of human 
resources training for tourism in training 
institutions:

Apply a specifi c procedure in
tour-ism training, renovate the program
con-tent, training methods and methods
asso-ciated with the new requirements of the
labor market. Enhance the application
of advanced technologies in the training

of human resources for tourism, and at
the same time associate training content
with specifi c requirements and updates of
groups of employment positions in the
in-dustry. Training institutions should focus
on training high-quality human resources,
management personnel at all levels. Links
between schools and businesses should be
enhanced and training models in tourism
businesses need to be deployed, to ensure
the eﬀ ectiveness of training and retraining
activities.

Fourth, improving the technology 
infrastructure and information system of 
the tourism industry:

Improve the technology
infrastruc-ture system to ensure connectivity and
enhance the ability of workers to access
and use technology in the industry. At
the same time, it is necessary to form and
build a tourism labor market information
system to promote the supply-demand
connection, and improve the eﬃ ciency
of the labor supply-demand connection in
the tourism sector.

Fifth, promoting international 
operation, strengthen public-private

co-operation:

Promote international
coopera-tion activities, strengthen public-private
cooperation in tourism human resource
development through expert exchange
programs, training, retraining and

invest-ment cooperation in training
infrastruc-ture, public infrastructure technology ...
to improve human resources, improve the
application of new technologies in
man-agement, tourism business and other jobs.
The development of tourism and the
explosion of Industry 4.0 not only bring
op-portunities but also create great challenges
for Vietnam’s tourism industry, especially
in the development of human resources in
response to the new situation. By actively
innovating thoughts and actions in the
de-velopment of human resources in tourism
- ensuring suﬃ cient quantity and ensuring
the quality of human resources, Vietnam
tourism really has a solid foundation to
seize the “spearhead” role in the national
economy and to develop sustainably.
References: