Turkish Hotel Operators Want Balinese Staff Members
The hotel industry in Turkey is eager to have Indonesian migrant workers from Bali working at Turkish (3-5 star) hotels. Ilham Achmad, Head of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Placement, Protection and Monitoring Agency (BP3TKI)'s Bali branch, said Balinese workers are wanted by Turkish hotel operators because they are excellent workers for spa therapy services offered at these hotels.
Balinese workers are considered to have great hospitality skills that match Turkish hotel operators' requirements. Considering Turkey is a major tourist destination for tourists around the globe, Turkish hotels are eager to offer the best services to their guests. Skilled Balinese workers would be a great asset for these hotel operators.
In fact, Achmad said that besides Turkey there are 70 more countries, including many European nations, that want to employ Balinese workers. Meanwhile, for Balinese workers it is attractive to work abroad because wages are usually higher. Indonesian migrant workers tend to send part of their wages to their Indonesian bank account or to their family members in Indonesia and therefore migrant workers are among the biggest sources of foreign exchange earnings for Indonesia.
Read more: What Are Indonesia's Top Foreign Exchange Earners?
However, there is plenty of competition for Balinese workers in the global tourism industry, for example from Thailand and the Philippines.
Besides the tourism industry, there also exists demand for Balinese workers in foreign nursing sectors. Examples are Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Japan. However, few Balinese workers are interested to go abroad to work as nurses because wages are not that attractive.
The Bali branch of the BP3TKI targets to see 6,500 Balinese people going to work abroad in 2018. Achmad says this target is rising each year since 2013 as more and more people from Bali migrate to other countries to take up employment. In 2017 around 5,000 Balinese workers went abroad with a significant number working in foreign cruise ships.
