But finding qualified employees remains a challenge for the industry. Although Viet Nam currently has 284 tourism schools, the training programmes they offer have not been consistently effective.

Dr Vu Khac Chuong, principal of the Sai Gon College of Culture, Arts and Tourism, said that there was an especially large gap in training quality between State-owned and non-State schools and between schools specialising in tourism and those offering more general education.

Vocational schools usually focused on practical training, he said, while universities and colleges were often academically focused and failed to teach important practical skills.

Additionally, Nguyen Van My, director of the Lua Viet Tourism Company in HCM City, said that guides for international tours must obtain a university degree and an English fluency certificate, while those conducting domestic tours only needed to graduate from high school and undergo brief training.

Experts said the tourism industry needed to establish a comprehensive set of training criteria to ensure that all employees were equally qualified.

Dr Phan Thanh Vinh, former principal of the International Marketing and Tourism School in HCM City, said the National Administration of Tourism had introduced a set of guidelines with funding from the European Union that had helped several schools improve their training process.

Le Van Hung, deputy director of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s representative office in HCM City, said training methods should be based on actual situations that those working in tourism in Viet Nam might encounter.

With this in mind, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism plans to introduce a National Professional Skills Criteria Set to improve the professional capacity of staff in eight areas including restaurant services and cooking.