Professional certification isn’t unknown in the hotel industry, but an agreement adopted by 10 member nations of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at a landmark conference takes it to a new level.
ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations, is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the meeting took place August 8-9. In an action with a far-reaching impact on travel and tourism, the delegates reviewed and ratified what is known as the Mutual Recognition Arrangement-Tourism Professionals, or MRA-TP.
With a goal of integrating the region’s tourism and hospitality industries, the certification program sets standards and qualifications for nearly all hotel industry jobs, even bellboys and waiters. Exempt would be “non-AEC nationals and most foreign managers” who are either from North America or Europe, says Christopher F. Bruton, a Bangkok-based consultant. While not exactly comparable, the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute offers 20 certifications, including those for hotel administrator, rooms division executive and hospitality supervisor.
AEC’s sweeping, ambitious program also applies to tour operators and travel agencies and could eventually lift some restrictions on hotel investment and authorize multi-entry visas.
Southeast Asia’s budding common market, which came to life on December 31, 2015, represents Asia’s third-largest economy with a population of 622 million people, according to widely publicized numbers. Compared to the European Union (EU) whose members are subject to binding edicts, the AEC couldn’t be more different with its jumble of disparate economies and governments, dominant religions and per capita income. From the wealthiest to the poorest, AEC members include Singapore, tiny Brunei (a dot on the island of Borneo shared with Malaysia), Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).
Each AEC member would abide by the MRA’s certification requirements, which apply to 23 jobs in the hotel industry within four broad areas: front office, housekeeping, food preparation and food and beverage service. The front office group covers manager, supervisor, receptionist, telephone operator and bellboy. A web-based platform is under development for registering certified tourism professionals and matching them to employers, according an ASEAN statement.
Many staff positions will require a basic proficiency in English. For some jobs, the standards call for advanced language skills, for others only a basic knowledge. At Bangkok’s Dusit Thani Hotel, “staff at all points of customer contact will receive language instruction through in-house training,” Sukanya Janchoo, general manager of the 517-room property, says in an email.
A national tourism professional board in each country will evaluate an applicant’s qualifications and approve the successful ones, according to the MRA. “All hotels need staff and Thailand’s hotel sector will certainly be a draw-card for job-seekers from around the region,” Janchoo says. “Naturally, all forms of accreditation and certification are good for the industry, because it will help our HR department get some assurance of what exactly has been learned and the value of qualifications (of) the applicant.”
And once employees are certified in their specialty, host countries should start opening their doors, says Surapong Techaruvichit, immediate past president of the Thai Hotels Association (THA). Work permits will still be required, but they should be easier to obtain than before. “There’s no question that the certificate will be accepted all over” and help alleviate the skilled worker shortage in many countries, he says.
In an effort to qualify prospective workers, the THA will apply to become a training organization, says Supawan Tanomkieatipume, THA’s new president and general manager of the 660-room Twin Towers Hotel in Bangkok. “For the industry, we see an opportunity to be able to recruit ASEAN staffs,” she adds.
Richard Chapman, general manager of Bangkok’s Sheridan Grande Sukumvit, says that possibly “these less costly workers from low wage countries may find employment in the provinces … but I doubt … such workers will be employed in 5-star Bangkok hotels.”
At this early stage of the MRA, representatives of several hotels including Accor, Mandarin Hotels and Hilton Worldwide declined to comment or had not responded at presstime, such as Marriott International. Through a representative, Brian Townsend, area general manager Southeast Asia Wyndham Hotel Group, says only that “each of the countries in which we operate have tight controls on foreign workers, and we are bound by quotas and restrictions.” The company has properties in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. As The Diplomat newspaper in Washington, D.C., once observed, Southeast Asian countries currently set “heavy requirements on firms wanting to employ foreigners.”
Thorsten Kirschke, Asia-Pacific president of Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, says the AEC “will drive intra-regional tourism on the back of improving connections and infrastructure,” as quoted in the Bangkok Post. The group operates in four of the 10 AEC countries.
Whether AEC certification will work remains to be seen. “All changes are fraught with both peril and promise, but ASEAN leaders have seen more promise than peril,” Dusit Thani’s Janchoo says.
Roland Leiser is a freelance journalist based in Silver Spring, Maryland.