Tourism industry aims to fill vacancies through job fairs, workshops
THE HOSPITALITY industry will hold job fairs and workshops nationwide throughout the year to address labor shortages that have affected the tourism industry since the pandemic’s onset, the Tourism department said.
The Department of Tourism (DoT) said that its national tourism job fair “Trabaho, Turismo, Asenso” will continue on its third leg on May 11, in partnership with the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE).
“For the tourism industry to become an engine of employment generation, the DoT will continue to empower our tourism workforce by giving them access to jobs that will match their skills,” said Tourism Secretary Christina G. Frasco in a statement on Wednesday.
“Its multiplier effect across various sectors can support job creation, which is exactly what we wish to achieve as we eye to exceed our targets for this year,” she said.
The job fairs held in its second phase in Central Luzon, Western Visayas, and Northern Mindanao offered over 8,185 jobs, the DoT said. They took place in Robinsons Starmalls in San Fernando, Pampanga, Robinsons Jaro in Iloilo City, and Limketkai Mall in Cagayan de Oro respectively.
The series of DoT-DoLE job fairs launched since August have offered 16,485 employment opportunities to job seekers in total.
Tourism stakeholders have previously said that the hotels, resorts, travel agencies, and tour operators sectors have struggled with such vacancies for a while now.
“Much of the workforce in our sector has gone elsewhere, to other industries, so looking for the right people with the right talent has been a problem,” said Margie F. Munsayac, Hotel Sales and Marketing Association (HSMA) chair and Bluewater Resorts’ vice president for sales and marketing, in an interview with BusinessWorld in March.
Since the pandemic, vacancies have risen after professionals realized they could get financial stability from work-from-home jobs.
Ms. Munsayac said that one way the HSMA is trying to bridge the resulting skills gap is by supporting the tourism workshops of the DoT and stepping up to train and educate young practitioners in the field.
Previously, the DoT said that over a million workers in the industry were affected by the coronavirus pandemic. It recently celebrated the Philippines reaching 2.65 million arrivals last year, which exceeded the benchmark target by one million.
“The more visitors we have, the more jobs we will create for our fellow Filipinos,” said Ms. Frasco.
She expressed hope that both the public and private sectors’ programs will meet the demands of employers following the influx of travelers brought by the ongoing “revenge travel” phenomenon. — Brontë H. Lacsamana
