Vietnam is building ambitious resorts and hotels. Can hospitality education, practical training and staff development keep pace with that growth?
As Vietnam's hospitality industry continues to expand, developing the people who will operate its increasingly ambitious properties may prove as important as building them.
Along the coast between Da Nang and Hoi An, there's no shortage of ambition.
Luxury resorts, international hotel brands, sophisticated restaurants and increasingly elaborate hospitality concepts continue to reshape the region. Considerable investment goes into architecture, interiors, landscaping and facilities designed to attract an increasingly demanding international clientele.
And quite rightly. Vietnam has established itself as a major tourism destination, and the development of its hospitality industry is something worth celebrating.
But while a new resort can be designed, built and furnished within a relatively predictable timeframe, developing the people who will operate it is a different proposition.
A beautiful lobby can be delivered on schedule. A genuinely experienced hospitality team takes rather longer.
Which raises an interesting question: is Vietnam investing in hospitality education and professional development at the same pace as it invests in hospitality infrastructure?
Anyone looking for the Vietnamese equivalent of a European école hôtelière will find that the country is hardly starting from scratch.
Vietnam has established vocational colleges, culinary schools, hospitality management programmes and partnerships with international educational institutions.
Saigontourist Hospitality College, for example, offers practical training in restaurant service, front-office operations and housekeeping. Its Restaurant & Hotel Operations programme dedicates more than 70% of its curriculum to practical work, according to the college's published course information.
Closer to home, Pegasus International College in Da Nang offers vocational certificates in food and beverage service, cooking and hotel operations, alongside more advanced hospitality management programmes.
Yet the industry continues to report significant shortages of qualified personnel.
According to industry estimates reported by Vietnam News Agency in May 2025, only around 43% of Vietnam's tourism workforce had received formal professional training. The sector was estimated to require approximately 40,000 additional workers annually, while training institutions supplied around half that number.
These figures cover tourism more broadly, rather than hotel and restaurant employees alone. Nevertheless, they illustrate the scale of the challenge.
The problem is partly quantitative: the industry needs more trained people. But the question of what happens after training is equally important.
Hospitality is a practical profession.
A student can learn the correct procedures for restaurant service, memorise the sequence of a formal dinner and understand how to handle a guest complaint. Applying those skills confidently during a busy Saturday evening is another matter.
Real guests aren't always particularly interested in following the procedures described in a training manual.
They change their minds, arrive unexpectedly, make unusual requests and occasionally become impatient. A wedding dinner runs late. A restaurant receives twice as many guests as expected. A room isn't ready when someone arrives.
Good hospitality depends on the ability to respond naturally and professionally to situations that cannot all be anticipated.
That ability develops through experience, supported by effective supervision.
And the gap between education and operational readiness is well documented.
In September 2026, Báo Đà Nẵng reported figures from the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Central–Central Highlands branch indicating that 62% of surveyed four- and five-star restaurant and hotel businesses in Da Nang had to finance additional training for newly recruited employees, particularly in professional standards and international communication.
Some additional training should be expected. Every hotel has its own procedures, clientele and operational requirements.
But when businesses repeatedly struggle to find employees with the practical skills they need, the relationship between education and the workplace deserves closer attention.
Could schools provide more experience in real hospitality environments? Could hotels become more involved in developing curricula, providing internships and supporting vocational training?
These aren't entirely new ideas. Some institutions and operators are already pursuing them.
The challenge is making effective cooperation sufficiently widespread to meet the industry's needs.
There's another part of the hospitality workforce that receives less attention than graduates and senior executives: the supervisors and middle managers.
Consider a newly recruited restaurant employee.
They might arrive with professional qualifications, or they might be learning the trade from the beginning. Either way, much of their development will take place alongside experienced colleagues and supervisors.
Those supervisors establish standards through their own behaviour. They explain procedures, correct mistakes, deal with difficult situations and help employees develop the confidence to make decisions.
A good supervisor can turn an inexperienced but motivated employee into a valuable member of the team.
An overwhelmed or inadequately prepared supervisor may struggle to provide the same guidance.
The quality of management therefore has consequences throughout the organisation.
This is a recognised challenge in Vietnam.
The Swiss-funded Tourism for Sustainable Development project, working with Switzerland's EHL Hospitality Business School and Vietnamese training institutions, developed Swiss Executive Hospitality Training to strengthen professional management capabilities.
Among its Vietnamese partners is IBH Academy in Da Nang, which began delivering the programme in 2025. The initiative specifically addresses the development of existing and aspiring hospitality managers.
It's an encouraging development, particularly because it recognises that professional education doesn't end when someone graduates or receives their first promotion.
A talented waiter doesn't automatically become an effective restaurant supervisor. Nor does an experienced restaurant supervisor necessarily arrive in an F&B director's position with all the financial, organisational and leadership skills that role requires.
Career progression needs to be supported by opportunities to learn.
And for ambitious young professionals, those opportunities may become an important consideration when choosing which hospitality company to work for.
Even excellent training programmes face another difficulty: keeping the people they've trained.
A 2026 Hoteljob.vn survey involving 331 tourism and hospitality organisations found an average annual employee turnover rate of 18.9% among the 326 that provided turnover figures. A quarter reported turnover of at least 30%.
The survey isn't a representative census of every hotel in Vietnam, but its findings illustrate the retention difficulties reported by participating businesses.
The implications extend well beyond recruitment expenses.
When an experienced employee leaves, a hotel loses more than someone who knows how to perform a particular task.
It loses familiarity with the property, knowledge of regular guests, relationships with colleagues and the judgement developed through countless small operational decisions.
Replacing that experience takes time.
And when experienced employees are constantly occupied training newcomers, they have fewer opportunities to develop their own skills or contribute to improving the operation.
Salaries and working conditions inevitably enter the discussion.
Hospitality can involve long hours, demanding guests, irregular schedules and significant pressure during busy periods. Employees also need reasons to believe their careers are going somewhere.
A hotel cannot reasonably expect to develop an exceptional team without considering how it will encourage talented people to stay.
Of course, hotels operate under financial constraints. Training, salaries and staffing levels must coexist with profitability and seasonal fluctuations in demand.
But the cost of continually replacing experienced employees also deserves a place in that calculation.
It would be unfair to suggest that Vietnam's hospitality industry has neglected employee development.
Major international hotel groups operate established training and career-development programmes, and Vietnamese companies are investing in their own systems.
Vinpearl, for example, reported 433,388 employee training hours and more than VND 30 billion in training and development expenditure during 2025, according to its annual report.
Those figures demonstrate a substantial commitment of resources, although training expenditure alone cannot tell us how effectively employees apply what they learn.
There are also encouraging developments in educational partnerships, vocational programmes and opportunities for existing hospitality professionals to improve their qualifications.
The industry clearly understands that workforce development matters.
What remains difficult to establish is how consistently these opportunities reach employees across the full range of Vietnamese hospitality businesses, from international luxury resorts to smaller independent properties.
And whether the resulting training produces the kind of service quality those businesses aspire to deliver.
At Insense, our involvement in hospitality comes through entertainment, event production and technical services.
We work alongside hospitality teams, often in circumstances where several departments and external partners must coordinate to deliver an event.
These experiences occasionally expose us to some of the challenges discussed here.
Communication isn't always straightforward. Responsibilities may be unclear. Teams working within familiar routines can find unusual requirements difficult to accommodate.
We've also encountered hospitality professionals whose preparation, resourcefulness and attention to detail make complicated situations remarkably easy to manage.
Our perspective is necessarily limited. Running a hotel or restaurant involves responsibilities considerably broader than the aspects of hospitality in which we participate.
Nevertheless, these interactions have reinforced our belief that quality is something an organisation develops through the people involved in delivering it.
Equipment, facilities and technical expertise all contribute. So do communication, judgement, preparation and the willingness to learn.
We have a genuine interest in understanding how Vietnam's hospitality industry is developing those capabilities, and in exchanging experiences with the professionals working to improve them.
Vietnam's hospitality industry has achieved an enormous amount in a relatively short period.
The country's growing collection of internationally recognised resorts, restaurants and tourism destinations reflects substantial investment and ambition.
Maintaining that progress will require continued attention to the people responsible for delivering the guest experience.
More effective cooperation between schools and employers would help. So would stronger practical training, better support for supervisors and clearer opportunities for professional advancement.
But perhaps the most important change is recognising workforce development as a continuous responsibility, shared by educational institutions, employers, managers and employees themselves.
Hospitality is, after all, an unusually human business.
A guest may choose a hotel for its location, architecture or facilities. Their impression of the experience will also depend on the people they meet throughout their stay.
As new properties continue to open across Da Nang, Hoi An and the rest of Vietnam, the buildings will undoubtedly attract attention.
The professionals who bring those buildings to life deserve at least as much.
