Tourism and Hospitality is a promising service sector in Bangladesh. It is considered as one of the biggest revenue generating sources for economic development along with wide opportunities for employment generation. It prudently acts as feeder of support all other industries. The sector can grow even faster with the esteemed advancement of the country. Conversely, in order for supporting smooth business and economic activity, a well performed hospitality industry will be among the most critical factors.

The Government of Bangladesh (GOB) has been implementing Skills for Employment Investment Program (SEIP) since 2014. Main objective is to provide growing young population of the country with market responsive inclusive skills training with a view to enhancing their employability and productivity. It is also expected that this would help minimize skills gap prevalent in industry and service sectors of the country. Tourism & hospitality (T&H) is among the 10 priority sectors that SEIP is now working with. SEIP has been supporting tourism and hospitality industry with necessary skills. As a whole, SEIP is being implemented under multi-Tranche financing framework arrangement (MFF) with Asian Development Bank (ADB), provider of the major share of project’s fund as loan. 

It is worth mentioning that the partnership between SDCMU and T&H ISC started back in 8th May, 2017 with the signing of a MOU between the parties to provide 4,000 people with skills training on different trades relevant to the sector (between July, 2017 and December 2020) and another MOU signed in 2020 (between January and December 2023) to provided skills training on different trades with a new set of training courses considering the market demand under Tranche-3 program. Issues pertinent to deliver quality training, capacity building and ensuring efficient management and monitoring have also been incorporated into the plan. 

With the active support of SEIP, T&H ISC has already trained about 10,000 people. Job placement rate has also been noteworthy, much higher than the required rate. Although, till date, female participation is not up to the expectation, this sector has good prospect to provide females with suitable skills and appropriate jobs.