Building Myanmar’s tourism workforce system

Six years of LuxDev-supported tourism human resource development, 2015–21

The challenge

Myanmar’s tourism sector was opening up quickly with few trained supervisors and managers, limited hospitality degrees, no national occupational standards, and no shared framework linking skills to jobs.

What I did

• Helped shape the Tourism HRD Strategy and Action Plan (2017).
• Supported management and supervisory training for over 3,000 people.
• Developed a Bachelor of Tourism and Hospitality Management for two universities (2016–18).
• Supported vocational hospitality training for disadvantaged youth and women in four institutions (2017–19).
• Contributed to the Centre for Tourism Development in Yangon (2016–20).
• Worked on the National Curriculum Framework (2018–20) and National Occupational Competency Standards (2017–20; 45 NOS per my profile).
• Acted as Team Leader for the Strategic Recovery Roadmap (2020).

Outcome

• A national HRD strategy, standards and curriculum framework in place.
• Reference from LuxDev’s Director of HR, Véronique Meyers-Sotil, confirming the achievements above.

Lessons

• Long engagements let standards, curricula and training centres reinforce each other.
• Shifting from operations to strategic advice (and acting CTA) needs clear handovers with national counterparts.