JITOA's career forum eyes tourism professionals

Executive Director Ahmad Al Bashiti said the Association will hold the "First Annual Tourism and Hospitality Career Forum" this June 2007 to provide the booming tourism sector with qualified and professional labor.

"We at JITOA believe the career forum is a very innovative idea to bring employers in Jordan's tourism sector and those who are seeking to develop a career whether in the travel business, in hotels or in the catering industry," he added.

The career forum is in line with the Kingdom's National Tourism Strategy drawn up in 2004 and implemented between 2005 and 2010, and which forecasted that the sector would need 50,000 more jobs by 2010, and the industry is in current need of 5,000.

Such jobs are across the board and range from tour operator's sales executives, travel executives, travel clerks, waiters, chefs, housekeepers, night staff and bell-boys and executive staff such as managers.

"Through the career forum we want to promote employment in the tourism sector as a career choice not only among school leavers and university students but in the labor market, and especially those thinking of switching employment and want to build a career in the different branches of the tourism sector," adds Bashiti whose fair is being backed by the USAID-Siyaha program to develop tourism in Jordan.

"We want potential job-seekers to come and meet the employers directly and see what the industry has in store for them, we want them to come and break the ice and forget about the old-fashioned way of thinking that 'a job in tourism is not for me mentality' which is slowly changing among Jordanians but that change needs to be more rapid," the Executive Director continued.

The Career Forum will include employers from tour operator offices, travel agencies, destination management companies, airlines, hotels and resorts, touristic projects, park management companies, clubs, restaurants, event management companies, car rental companies, and from universities and companies.

The tourism sector is the second largest contributor to Jordan's Gross Domestic Product, with a 2006 contribution of over 10 percent and around $1.62 billion in the first 11 months of that year, and the growth scenarios are expected to continue because of the increasing investments in such tourist cities as Aqaba.