Yunnan sees hiring boom as tourism makes strong comeback

KUNMING, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- A resort in southwest China's Yunnan Province, a top tourist destination, has placed several ads lately in its quest to fill 40 vacancies for jobs such as ticket sellers, hotel receptionists and shuttle bus drivers.

Since this year's Spring Festival holiday, which ran from Jan. 21 through 27, the Taipinghu resort in the city of Mile has seen a marked increase in tourist arrivals, said Hou Zhipeng, deputy general manager of the resort.

"Considering the labor demand over the course of the whole year, we are now clearly understaffed," Hou added.

The resort initiated its recruitment drive as Yunnan witnesses a continued rebound in tourism, resulting in the sector's increasing demand for labor.

Yunnan recorded 45.15 million tourist visits during this year's Spring Festival holiday, up 244.7 percent year on year, according to the provincial culture and tourism department.

Tourism revenue during the holiday hit 38.44 billion yuan (about 5.66 billion U.S. dollars), up 249.4 percent year on year.

About 500 km from the Taipinghu resort, a renowned tourist site in Pu'er City, where the ruins of a major section of the Ancient Tea Horse Road are located, posted a job ad on Feb. 3, seeking to hire several guides.

In less than a day, it received loads of phone calls asking about these job vacancies.

"Thanks to the China-Laos Railway, we have received an increasing number of visitors, especially during the Spring Festival holiday. The rise in tourist traffic has added greatly to the demand for labor," said a female employee surnamed Zhang, who is in charge of recruiting.

The 1,035-km China-Laos Railway connects Kunming, capital of Yunnan, with the Laotian capital Vientiane.

Similar challenges were experienced by Miao Liwei, a homestay operator in the Old Town of Lijiang. Since early January, he has posted two job ads.

According to Miao, who runs three homestays with a total of 58 rooms, all the rooms were fully booked for the Spring Festival holiday.

"Customer service representatives have recently struggled to handle the influx of inquiries, this despite the team working 24 hours a day in two shifts," Miao said.

The Old Town of Lijiang recorded 1.36 million tourist visits during the seven-day holiday this year, compared with 1.37 million in the same period in 2019.

Following the tourism revival, a number of homestays, hotels and eateries in the Old Town are hiring, with some who used to work in this line of business now returning to the tourism industry.

The hiring boom shows that Yunnan's tourism market has been further boosted, and that the tourism sector is staging a vigorous recovery, said an official with the provincial culture and tourism department.