ĐÀ NẴNG — The Empire Group and local universities and colleges on Tuesday inked an agreement on manpower training in the hospitalty sector to meet the demand for 10,000 jobs in 2020.

It’s one of the largest co-operation deals on human resources training between a hospitality group and local education centres in the city.

Under the plan, five universities and colleges, including the Economics University, Đông Á and Duy Tân colleges, Pegasus College and Việt Nam-Australia College will start practical education programmes on tourism services with support from the Empire Group.

Vice director of the city’s tourism department, Nguyễn Xuân Bình, said the city’s hospitality sector would face a deficiency of skilled manpower in 2020 when it would need 27,000 employees at hotels and resorts alone. Bình said number rooms of hotel and resort projects would increase from 26,000 to 62,000 in 2030.

Đà Nẵng City’s hospitality sector currently employs 14,000 people, 40 per cent of them skilled. The 12 colleges and vocational centres in the region can only train around 5,000 students a year.

Deputy General Director of Empire Group, Trịnh Việt Hưng, said the group committed to employing qualified local labourers from the tourism training centres.

The hospitality group will employ 2,000 workers at the $622million CocoBay project – the first entertainment-hospitality complex in the central region – between July and September this year.

“We plans to employ 10,000 skilled labourers at hotel resort and entertainment centres at the CocoBay complex in 2020,” Hưng said, adding that the agreement would help boost high-quality human resource training system in the city.

The Empire Group has also signed a strategy co-operation deal with Dream Hotel Group of the US and Louvre Hotels Group of France for Empire hospitality management in Việt Nam.

The city hosted 5.6 million tourists last year, 1.67 million of them foreigners. Đà Nẵng has so far developed 16 tourist property projects, consisting of 749 villas, of which 609 are for sale and 140 for lease. — VNS