As the highly anticipated tourist season began, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to find workers. Many resorts and hotel owners share the same concern: a massive shortage in all service sectors.
Elira Demiraj, general director of the National Employment Agency says that tourism advanced a lot in the past few years, meanwhile training skilled workers requires at least 4 years.
“Vocational education was not really attractive for young people considering what the labor market had to offer”, Demiraj explained.
However, she asserts that around 80% of students graduating from vocational schools are now employed.
But she added that what needs to change is the mentality about finding a job in the tourism sector.
“Training the labor market requires promotion and altering stereotypes. The opportunity is closer than ever”, she added.
The chair of the “Albanian Skills” society, Ana Zacharian, believes that the problem is inherited from a distorted educational orientation in the past.
“We work on promoting professional skills because this has been evidenced as a major gap because you reap what you sow. Bad orientation, universities without the proper criteria and incenting youth toward general education has damaged this sector”, she said.
“Years ago, students would say that I received the necessary point for this field and that is why I choose it. The number of students has not increased a lot. We need to do a lot to make them attracted to tourism and not see it as a temporary job, as it’s a degree that can land you a job as a hotel or restaurant manager, or tour operator”, explained Licaj.
Kliton Gerxhani, from the association of tour operators, says that Albania is heading towards massive tourism, something wrong according to him.
“A mistake was made when the government visioned how it will develop tourism. If a country with 2.5 million inhabitants aims to have 10 million tourists it means that it is working to have massive tourism, but this has its own downfall. We cannot compete against Greece or Croatia as they are larger countries with more workers employed in the service sector”, he said.
