Skills Gaps and Vocational Training in Vietnam’s Hospitality Sector: A Policy Analysis in the Context of ASEAN MRA-TP Implementation

Abstract

Vietnam welcomed 21.17 million international arrivals in 2025 17.8 per cent above the 2019 peak yet the recovery exposed a structural mismatch between demand for skilled hospitality labour and vocational training supply. This study examines the mismatch during 2015–2025 and evaluates the policy and institutional framework against the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement on Tourism Professionals (MRA-TP). It combines qualitative policy analysis of legal instruments, regional agreements, occupational standards and official statistics with a descriptive reconstruction of labour demand and supply. Evidence is organised across four dimensions: demand dynamics, training capacity, standards and qualifications, and governance. The findings show three distinct phases: expansion (2015–2019), pandemic collapse (2020–2022) and demand recovery without equivalent workforce recovery (2023–2025). Accommodation employment was 502,759 in 2019, when a separate source reported that the wider workforce met about 80 per cent of need, and fell below 400,000 by 2022 against a requirement of about 485,000 at above 70 per cent occupancy; the requirement was projected to exceed 800,000 by 2025. Approximately 20,000 annual graduates from 195 institutions meet only one third of the estimated requirement of 60,000 workers; under a 60 per cent sector-entry assumption, the cumulative unmet requirement reaches 432,000 workers for 2022–2030. Institutional fragmentation compounds the quantitative shortfall: three overlapping occupational standards systems coexist, tourism occupations are not fully referenced to the Vietnamese Qualifications Framework, and systematic registration on the ASEAN Tourism Professional Registration System is not publicly documented. The study concludes that Vietnam’s hospitality skills gap is primarily a problem of institutional coherence and proposes five sequenced reforms linking standards consolidation, competency-based certification, co-financing, curriculum renewal and workforce measurement.