Sights

Jordan has indeed many sights and places to visit all over the country. It is seeking to increase the number of people who visit them, and its doing that through its Career Forum to provide these places with top professional cadres to benchmark their international standards and provide them with needed quality.

The race has started for Jordan's First Annual Tourism and Hospitality Career Forum that is set to start on 31 July - 1 August, 2007. With less than a month to go, every one at the Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association, the organizers, is preparing for the final touches to make the Forum succeed both in content and in service.

There will be employers from the tourism sector who have special booths so that visitors can come and connect, establish relations, submit C/V's and be told how the tourism industry is expanding in different areas of the Kingdom in top places like Amman, Jeresh, Madaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, and Aqaba, in Azraq, Dana and Karak.

While it is generally recognized locals may shun away from being employed in the tourism sector, the Career Forum is designed to create a new image for the tourism sector in the Kingdom, as a dynamic industry, plenty of job opportunities, and a sector where you can make a career whether in its hotels, restaurants, tour operator offices, travel agents and/or in its transport companies.

"Some employers representing these sectors will definitely be there," says JITOA's Executive Director Ahmad El Bashiti who has been busy for the last three months attempting to secure sponsors, and working with the Jordan Development Tourism Project, Siyaha, the organization that is supporting the Career Forum.

Siyaha is a USAID sponsored project designed to strengthen the tourism sector in Jordan and increase public awareness. One of the objectives of the Careers Forum is to increase the pool of professionally skilled labor and upgrade the level of quality service within the industry, and thus working in line with the views and vision of Siyaha.

It is expected that many people will come to the two-day venue that is being held at the Zara Expo in Jabal Amman's Third Circle . However organizers say the Career Forum, a first of its kind in Jordan 's tourism sector is aimed at current industry employees, professional employees wanting to explore new opportunities, college and university graduates as well as those from vocational training centers, and professional Jordanians working outside the tourism industry.

"This is the best time to enter the industry," says El Bashiti. "Its growing, dynamic, and global, judged from the number of international visitors who are coming here for holidays and conferences."

The Career Forum will show the industry is looking for different types of skills, and the employers who are going to be there will both provide indicators as to what kind of occupations they are looking for as in waiters, housekeepers, account executives, and so on.

Directly meeting employers, it is hoped will give the Career Forum, the needed authority to tell visitors that this our tourism industry, its growing but it will only continue to blossom with your help, you the public, El Bashiti adds.

The Career Forum has now its own website www.thcforum.net  establishing a website, and telling visitors the Career Forum will have a permanent place in cyberspace where visitors will have complete access to the job and career opportunities in Jordan's tourism industry.