More than 3,100 workers in Singapore's tourism and lifestyle services sectors have taken part in Career Conversion Programmes

This is a thirty-fold increase from approximately 110 workers who benefitted from CCPs in 2019. As it stands, the CCPs will further benefit another 1,400 workers from now till December 2022.

The Ministry of Manpower's 24^th Job Situation Report has revealed that from January 2020 to mid-August 2021, more than 3,100 workers from over 200 companies in Singapore have enrolled in Career Conversion Programmes (CCPs) for the tourism and lifestyle services sector.

This, the report noted, is a thirty-fold increase from approximately 110 workers from around 40 companies that benefitted from CCPs in 2019. If this participation rate keeps up, the CCPs will further benefit another 1,400 workers from now till December 2022, the Ministry stated.

Since January last year, Workforce Singapore (WSG) has launched a total of 18 CCPs for these sectors. These programmes complement the five existing CCPs launched previously by equipping workers with skills to adopt new technology, as well as digital and technical skills so that they could assume in-demand roles such as digital strategist, digital marketing executive/manager, and operations executive (digital solutions).

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Apart from the above, the report highlighted that based on industry engagements, smaller, independent hotels would like to improve on their digital sales and marketing skills, and would benefit from more support in this area.

A demand sensing survey with the close to 60 participating companies also revealed the following:

• One in four (23%) was still conducting sales and marketing efforts mainly on traditional channels such as TV commercials and print advertisements;
• Two in five (39%) only started to conduct sales and marketing digitally in 2020;
• Three in four (75%) said that they would like to improve their digital sales and marketing skills; and
• One in four (23%) felt that they lacked workers with the right digital sales and marketing skills.

On that note, in addition to WSG and Singapore Tourism Board’s (STB) Digital Marketing Place-and-Train Programme launched in March 2020, the duo will launch an enhanced CCP for Digital Marketing Tourism Professionals in September 2021.

The programme, according to the report, have been enhanced with new digital sales modules, such as optimising sales conversion techniques and maintaining after-sale customer relationships through digital channels.

As part of the programme, trainees are required to develop digital marketing campaigns and sales pitches for their companies. The programme will help employees from the hotel and MAT sectors take on roles with better prospects, such as digital sales and marketing executive, product specialist, and business development specialist in the next two years.

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