"My name is U Lwin Aye,
I am working as a freelance tourist guide
for almost forty years
and I also work as a tour guide trainer.
Because I love this kind of profession,
you know, to show the old temples around Bagan
and tell more about Myanmar history,
and the culture of Myanmar Buddhism."
Among South-East Asian countries,
Myanmar has had the highest rate of growth
of international visitor arrivals over the past four years.
Tourism is a key driver of socio-economic progress in Myanmar
and it’s expected to provide over two million new jobs by 2020.
"However, there is a gap between incoming investments
and the skills of our citizens.
As a developing country,
Myanmar is facing a number of challenges in the skills sector
like any other developing nation."
“Skills development is hugely important for tourism.
Tourism is one of the new sectors,
industries growing very fast in Myanmar.
Tourism has huge potential for the development of the country.
Not just the hotels and the restaurants, you know…
the front end of the tourist chain
but for the economy as a whole.
It’s very very important that the workforce is equipped
with the skills required to support the emerging tourist sector.
And also the environmental sensitivity,
you know... the ability to manage tourism
in a way that doesn’t damage
and does protect Myanmar’s very beautiful environment."
To assist Myanmar in further developing the tourism sector
and its workforce,
the ILO launched the “Scaling up STED:
Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification” project
with a focus on tour guides.
Tour guides are on the front line of the tourism industry,
and they are the ones who are in direct contact with visitors.
The ILO’s STED project facilitated cooperation
among all stakeholders involved in the tourism sector
and helped to create competency based standards for tourist guides.
“If all the tour guides in Myanmar train
according to the set competency standards,
I believe our tour guides
will be trained according to international standards.
That is why the set competency standards
will be taught in hotel training schools,
tour guide related training schools and so forth,
under the authority of the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism."
“We want to conduct competency based training programme
in our tourism training school,
so now ILO is supporting to develop
such kind of competency based training programme.
That’s why this project is very useful for our tourism training school.”
“These newly developed competency standards
will give us quite a perfect training guidelines
that we call competency based training (CBT)
with the developed action learning
instead of an old style of lecturing."
"I think the secret of the success of the STED programme
has been its strong national ownership.
You know, the key stakeholders have really bought into this process…
it’s been linked to the national development strategy,
to the national tourism strategy,
but also to the national skills development strategy."
"So, we are aware we cannot accomplish this with our ministry alone.
That is why we have requested assistance from the ILO
through its STED Project."
"To improve the Myanmar tourism sector
we also need to work together with other departments.
We must connect them all and work together.
In addition, we need the private sector onboard
through public private partnerships."
"We need a lot of help from the government.
As for UMTA and others organizations,
we really need to work with the government
so that we can actually facilitate the extra needs of the industry.
So it’s more like Government
and private sector working together for a better industry."
"Through the guidelines of NSSA,
we also need to work together
with Union of Myanmar Travel Association (UMTA)
and Myanmar Tour Guide Association as well.
So that while we formulate the curricula,
our outcomes should meet the needs of the industry."
"From our side, we have requested the STED Project
not only to draft standards in the future
but also to provide trainings based on those standards,
draft the curricula and improve the quality of teachers and trainers."
"This training is a very effective way to become a professional tour guide."
"My nephews and nieces
are all now becoming new comers of tourist guides.
I want them to study,
improve their general knowledge,
presentation and language skills,
and acquire the right attitude.
It is very important
that the young generation of tour guides receive
the right training and skills to present the rich culture
and traditions of Myanmar in the right way to foreign visitors.
I want the new comer tour guides
to always remember the polite manners
and behave more like old Myanmar style."
International Labour Organization (ILO) 2017