Durano urges enhancement of tourism-related courses

Along with the massive and rapid growth of the tourism industry is the need to further enhance and expand the tourism related courses especially the hotel and restaurant management curriculum.

This was disclosed yesterday by Tourism Secretary Ace Durano in a press briefing shortly after the opening of the first Tourism Jobs Fairs at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel in Lahug, this city.

"We are talking with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to adjust the HRM curriculum to include more practical skills and more time in the real work experience for our students. This is to get our graduates ready for work," Durano said.

With the expansion of the industry, the players in the country today he said would end up pirating each of their personnel due to the shortage of employable graduates available, which is not healthy for the industry in the long run.

"We have to allocate the entire last year of the HRM program for the practicum or on-the-job training (OJT) exposure for our students. For one, our students have to have the language skills. Our graduates have to know how to speak in Japanese, Mandarin, Korean and Russian," Durano disclosed.

Real work experience for the students is also important so that they will get the necessary skills that would make them highly employable.

"We also partner with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for skills enhancement training of our students, say for example aqua sports management," he added.

On the same development, Durano is surprised over the number of tourism-related job vacancies. "I didn't expect that the job vacancies reached up to over 33,000. This is the combination of the Davao, Manila and Cebu legs of the first tourism jobs fair we are having," he said in delight adding that the success of the jobs fair can be gauged by the number of the vacancies.

"The jobs fair we are having now here in Cebu, in Davao and in Manila is just a start and is aimed to jumpstart the online system (www.tourismjobs.ph)," Durano said adding that this undertaking is not only a plain jobs fair but also a vehicle for human resource development.

Comprising the 101 exhibitors are the different tourism industry players that include hotels, resorts, travel agencies, beverage manufacturers, airline companies, telecom firms, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, tourism-oriented property developers and government offices and corporations among others.

The tourism jobs fair is an on-going activity and doesn't stop after the affair. This initiative of the Department of Tourism (DOT) goes on for the rest of the year.

The TJF is the DOT's pro-active response to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's 10-point agenda that includes creating six to 10 million jobs as a government priority. Stringent requirements were applied to potential exhibitor employers to ensure that job applicants are offered quality jobs.

Supporting the TJF are various professional associations, travel and tour-related companies and national government agencies such as CHED, Bureau of Local Employment of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), TESDA and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).