Newport World Resorts (NWR) has continued strengthening its executive team by naming Mark Ross Rubio as Marketing and Administrative Head of its Academy for Leisure and Tourism (ALT).
According to information posted on the company’s social media accounts, Rubio is a seasoned professional with over 10 years of experience in diverse administrative roles, with a strong focus on operations, client satisfaction.
He most recently served as School Manager at the Asian Institute of Management and previously held senior positions at Victory Christian International School of Pasig and Dusit Hospitality Management College.
Newport’s ALT is a self-created training school for hospitality professionals, aiming to develop local Filipino talent to pursue careers in the hospitality segment both in the Philippines and further abroad.
In an interview with Inside Asian Gaming in 2024, Kevin Tan, Chairman of NWR operator Travellers International Hotel Group Inc and CEO of its parent Alliance Global Group, said the Philippines had long faced challenges in retaining home-grown talent due to regional demand.
“We therefore have this problem all the time where we lose several hundred people every year to other jurisdictions or other markets,” Tan explained. “But, because it’s an inevitability, I told the team that instead of trying to fight it, why not embrace it?
“What we have done is created an academy, a school, where you can actually get a certificate. We call this the Academy for Leisure and Tourism. We’ve set them up right here and we train everyone from housekeeping to hotel staff, restaurant workers, F&B people, even the dealers. Anything that you need to have, any talent that you would need for an integrated resort, we train them there and then we deploy them in our integrated resort.
“The key here is to just continually train and then supply, train and supply. My hope is that for the next 12 months, we’ll probably be able to graduate about 300 to 400 students. But I really want to ramp that up because I think we look at ourselves as a talent development center.
“We’re not just going to supply ourselves, but maybe even other integrated resorts, or maybe even bring them to other countries as well. That’s really the vision for this particular group. It’s embracing what I would like to call an opportunity in this segment.”
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