Vietnam is building English benchmarks for tourist workers to follow as it realized the importance of English communication skills to the sustainable development of the tourism sector, a conference in Hanoi on September 12 was told.
Attendants admitted the country’s shortage of skilled staff, especially those with good command of English and other languages.
In 2006, Vietnam reported around 234,000 workers directly working in the tourism sector. However, few are good at English use.
The delegates reviewed the project “setting up English benchmarks for six Vietnamese tourism occupations” carried out by TOEIC Vietnam within the framework of implementation of the Vietnam Human Resources Development in Tourism Project (funded by the EU). They also highlighted the role of the project in helping the country build English benchmarks for tourism workforce.
Through the project, the English benchmarks developed for six Vietnamese tourism occupations, namely Front Office, Food & Beverage Service, Housekeeping, Hotel Security, Tour Operations and Tour Guiding, have been introduced.
These are important fields as workers in the fields are first people directly introducing the Vietnam’s image to the world and that English skills directly affect the quality of tourism services, tourism experts emphasized, revealing that English benchmarks for these occupations are based on the TOEIC benchmarks.
The outstanding advantage of the TOEIC test compared with others is that not only does it result in quantifiable scores, but also in qualitative ones. Therefore, applying English benchmarks will help enterprises choose the right people, maintain English language skills among their staff and not waste time and expense on staff retraining.
The Vietnamese tourism industry should see the bigger picture for the English language skills of its labor force. It should also serve as a basis for enterprises to develop standards and a roadmap for applying standards scientifically, reasonably and effectively, the experts explained.
At present, Vietnam has around 50 tourism workforce training establishments including centers, colleges and intermediate schools.
The country now ranks the seventh among countries having highest tourism growth rate worldwide.
The tourism industry now contributes 8 per cent to Vietnam’s national GDP. (Vietnam & World Economy)
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