Education & Training for Travel Industry

SM,2009

Education

School leavers should pursue tertiary education if their parents can afford it. Alarmingly, large
number of students in colleges and universities continue to learn by rote; mingle only with their tiny
circles of friends; complete their assignments by downloading from the computer with some cut and
paste or simply plagiarizing.

Their diplomas or degrees are of little value if they are unable to describe in their own words what
they have learned. Those with minimal social values and skills account for the large number of
unemployed and underemployed graduates.

Tourism and Hospitality courses are popular as they are easily saleable to those attracted to the
glamour and excitement of travel. However, tourism is too wide and academic to study for direct
employment.

The students like to hear that they will have the option to work in any tourism sector but the
reality is that those graduating have not been trained for any job. Without the specialized
knowledge and skills, an overwhelming number of tourism graduates do not work in the tourism
industry.

Those who do may find themselves working alongside or even reporting to their former
classmates who have started to work earlier. The key to success in any career or business is
specialization. Therefore, those who wish to work in hotels should study Hotel Management
and not a general tourism course.

College and university students must expose themselves and engage with people of varied
backgrounds and diverse interests; develop critical and creative thinking; discuss and
debate their assignments; hone their interpersonal communication skills; and acquire social values
and skills.

Those who have developed themselves will have no difficulty securing jobs in any industry and
will be able to make rapid progress and achieve better success in their careers than those
without tertiary education.

Weaker graduates however, will be preoccupied looking for opportunities with higher
pay instead of concentrating on their jobs, raising their performances and developing their careers.

Training

Those who cannot afford to further their studies after scoring good SPM or STPM results are better
workers than weak graduates. They have to earn a living for themselves or support their families
and are more determined to prove themselves.

The lucky few join the right companies, pick up good work cultures, and learn well on the job by
receiving training initially and giving out training later.

Unfortunately, a large number of companies in the travel industry are rather weak or small with
their staff making slow progress in their careers. Formal industrial training that is directly related
to their work and business sector will shorten their learning curve.

The travel industry constitutes only a small sector of tourism as 75% of the tourist spending
in Malaysia is on accommodation, food and shopping. It is further divided into four major
sub-sectors: Travel Agencies, Tour Operators, Transport Companies and MICE & Event
Management Organisers.

The most effective training programme for any one of these sectors would be the highly
specialized Executive Diploma courses. For example, tourism graduates who wish to work
and excel in tour companies at an executive or management level should enroll for the Executive
Diploma in Tours Management, which is a cluster of four Career Certificate courses in Inbound
Tour Operations; Tour Guiding (Including licence); Outbound Tour Operations and Tour Leading.

Executive Diploma courses are customized for specific industrial sectors as they are conducted
in the evenings or weekends to allow existing practitioners to be formally trained.

They concentrate on the required technical skills for a particular sector and include knowledge
common for all businesses such as management, marketing, communication, leadership, legal and
finance.

There are many seminars and workshops on common skills for travel industry personnel to
attend but there is a dearth of courses on technical skills.

Knowledge Worker

Experienced personnel who have done well in their careers or business will do even better while
studying for their MBA. On the other hand, executives who are doing a lousy job now will
continue to dish out more of the same even after getting their MBA.

The credibility of MBA and PhD holders take a dive when their resumes or writings contain
words and phrases, which are out of place, and the messages disjointed.

Education develops people but qualifications alone do not necessarily make them better than those
without.

Every industry requires Knowledge Workers who have acquired the necessary technical
skills, Learning Methodology in order to keep learning on the job and possess Social Values and
Social Skills.

Human capital development will further encompass health and spiritual capital. Instead, our
institutes of higher learning have been churning out too many graduates lacking in all these areas.

It is sad that the present system of education is not contributing to the progress of our
travel industry and standards are not uplifted when the vast majority of industry practitioners
are not keen to learn.

Although many personnel lack competency, only a few are prepared to invest their own time
and money for training. Regrettably, the need for training does not equate to demand.

Therefore, it requires the intervention of the authorities. For example, over 20,000 participants
involved in tourism from the public and private sectors attended training during Visit Malaysia
2007 when the 1-2 day short courses were almost fully subsidized.

Other than computerization and internet, there has been no significant advancement in the
local travel industry since Malaysia hosted its first PATA Conference in 1972.

In addition, the loss of a generation of English-speaking Malaysians has not contributed
to raising quality standards and customer service.

YS Chan

Consultant