School of Hospitality and Tourism
On August 9, 2016 in Jakarta, Indonesia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has officially announced a Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA-TP). This agreement will create a common mechanism for tourism labours in each member country to be recognized and allowed to work in any other ASEAN country, step by step establishing a unified, dynamic and competitive tourism labour market.
The mutual ecognition arrangement on tourism employment standards includes 32 standardized job titles, along with 52 categories of qualifications and certifications, creating the legal framework for training, appraisal and assessing labor capacity of each member country in order to meet the growing demand of the tourism industry in the ASEAN member countries.
Thus, the mutual recognition agreements on ASEAN tourism employment standards open up great opportunities for those who are interested and want to develop their career in this dynamic industry. It can be said that in the context of open market for tourism workers, employment is no longer an issue to learners if they know to build the necessary knowledge and skills as well as foreign language skills to meet the needs of employers.
In fact, even in the tourism labour market in Vietnam in general and the Central – Highlands in particular, the employment of tourism students is not limited by market opportunities but their lack of competence, especially with manager level upwards. This calls for Vietnamese tourism students to change their mindsets, their way of learning, or the chance of getting a job in the ASEAN tourism market will become greatly challenging and students with lack of preparation will be ‘lost at their home stage’.
HAT Marketing group
