Job prospects abound in tourism — expert

MANILA, Philippines — The growing tourism industry in the country is teeming with job prospects as stakeholders plan on employing 6.5 million Filipinos in the sector by 2022.

“To encourage more Filipinos to work in the local tourism sector, there should be more meaningful jobs that have to be created with decent salaries,”John Paolo Rivera, associate director for the Asian Institute of Management(AIM) Dr. Andrew Tan Center for Tourism told The STAR in an email.

He said meaningful jobs are those wherein compensation is not just based on tips and commissions.

He identified the generation of meaningful jobs and the implementation of a decent incentives systems as the current challenges in the country’s tourism employment sector.

“There should be sufficient incentives that will entice Filipinos to work in the tourism industry and actually stay,” Rivera said.

According to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the tourism sector employed an estimated 5.2 million Filipinos as of end-2016.

The Department of Tourism (DOT) is projecting tourism sector employment to hit 6.5 million by the end of the Duterte administration in 2022. This is based on the National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP).

In addition, Rivera cited the availability of training for tourism practitioners regarding recent trends and practices in tourism as another area the industry needs to improve on in line with growing its employment figures.

Several tourism stakeholders earlier said the problem lies in the lack of qualified employees, and not the availability of jobs.

“There might be some disconnect in terms of the skills that are being taught vis-a-vis what is expected in the real world,” Rajah Tours president Jojo Clemente earlier said.

Clemente said sometimes its not really the lack of skill that is creating the disconnect, but rather the attitude of candidates, especially those fresh out of college.

“We hire for attitude because the skills can be taught. We can always augment, we can always enhance what you have learned in the past. But attitude is something you cannot change,” Clemente said.

Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort vice president for sales and marketing Margie Munsayac earlier said the tourism industry, especially the accommodation sector, will be needing to fill a lot of job posts in the coming years due to the rising number of tourists.

Based on the NTDP, the tourism sector is targeted to grow the tourism sector in the next five years by reaching 12 million foreign arrivals and 89.2 million domestic travelers in 2022.

For this year, the DOT is expecting foreign arrivals to hit the seven million mark.

In the first eight months of the year, foreign arrivals have hit 4.4 million, a 10 percent rise from the same period last year.