Talent shortage becomes major bottleneck for Hainan tourism development

Hainan is facing a huge talent shortage as the island needs thousands more skilled talents for the development of the tourism industry.

"Despite the abundant good natural resources and high-end hotel distribution, the island still lags far behind other similar island tourist destinations in talent”, said Chen Yao, the Inspector of the Hainan Provincial Tourism Development Commission.

As of June last year, there were 3,898 tourist-related units in Hainan and employees in the tourism sector reached 260,000, accounting for 3.1% of the total population.

A recent research on the Talents Development Trend in Hainan Tourism has revealed the tourism industry needs around 477,000 working members by 2012, while the talent gap still exceeds more than 200,000, causing a big bottleneck for tourism development. “We have to rely on the support of talents rather than the increasing emerging big-name tourism brands into Hainan if we want to create our own standards”, said Chen Yao.

It is forecast that over the next 10 years, the tourism industry needs around 500 senior administrative personnel, 70,000 professional skilled talents and 310,000 employees working in the service sector.