This study was aimed to find out the teacher’s challenges in teaching speaking to tourism students of SMKN 3 Palembang. Qualitative with a case study design was applied for this study. The data were collected by using in-depth interviews with teacher who teach speaking for students of tourism who have experience and quality of teaching speaking at SMKN 3 Palembang. Thematic technique was used to analyze the interview data in depth. The results showed that teacher faced several challenges during teaching speaking for vocational high school students, including; (1) reference, (2) lack of need analysis on the students, (3) tourism students do not have enough knowledge of speaking in communicative activities, (4) the size of the groups, and (5)Lack of teacher opportunities in tourism training. This finding recommends further ideas for conducting teaching speaking for students of tourism.