DOT girds for jobs fair in Cebu

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Tourism (DOT) is busy preparing for its fourth annual jobs fair in Cebu City next month as the ongoing global financial crunch is expected to make Philippine tourism even more price-competitive and attractive.

“The global crisis is projected to favor short-haul trips and make the extremely high-end outbound market segments in nearby Japan, Korea, China and Southeast Asia to really consider visiting the Philippines instead of the expensive European and North American destinations,” said Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano.

“Moreover, foreign investors in tourism businesses will find the Philippines very attractive since it’s one of the very few that are least affected by the world crisis and whose economy appears to be one of the more stable in the region. So that’s a boon to our tourism industry, which we have to gear up in terms of highly qualified professionals and highly skilled personnel,” Durano said of the need for the 4th Trabaho sa Turismo (TST) fair slated at the SM City Cebu on March 13 and 14.

TST Cebu comes on the heels of the scheduled opening of new international hotels in various parts of the Philippines in 2009 and 2010 involving some 3,000 new rooms, thousands of jobs, and billions of pesos worth of investments.

Participating in the Cebu leg of TST 2009 are DOT-accredited local and foreign-based employers such as airlines, shipping/cruise companies, hotels, resorts, restaurants, travel agencies, tour operators, convention and exhibition centers, spa and wellness establishments, recruitment firms, golf clubs, malls and department stores, call centers and business process outsourcing companies, banks, schools, government agencies, and entertainment outfits, among many others.

Supported by ABS-CBN and Manila Bulletin as media partners, this annual event to be held both in Cebu and Manila this summer is the country’s only tourism-focused jobs fair, enabling the DOT and the industry to create a system for methodical matching the applicants’ qualifications and the employers’ skills requirements.

The Manila leg of TST 2009 will be held on May 22-23 at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City.

This early, though, jobseekers can already pre-register for the Manila and Cebu TST 2009 by logging on to www.jobsdb.com.ph.

Jobseekers who are not JobsDB.com members may create an online resumé or attach a word document file of their resumés.

On the other hand, JobsDB.com members can use their existing log-in ID and password to pre-register for the event.

A jobseeker may already view the available opportunities a week before the activity and may update his/her resumé online even after the event.

Attendees of the TST 2009 will likewise be given “Career Cards” for free. Through this card, Trabaho sa Turismo embraces a new technology that encodes the applicant’s resume via a bar code and does away with the printed form, according to the Philippine Convention and Visitors Corp. (PCVC), an attached agency of the DOT.

The Career Card effectively reduces the expenses of application incurred from paper and transportation costs.

Likewise, the Career Card levels the playing field for jobseekers as it eliminates discrimination against age, gender and social status.

During the event proper, each participating company will have its own barcode scanners that will be used to transport a candidate’s resumé to its database.