“And why do you want to pursue a course in hotel management?” is a question that is fired at every student wanting to pursue an undergraduate course in hotel or hospitality management. “Well, I like meeting people, cooking for them and making them happy” is the usual answer thrown back by the candidate, or, “Sir I really like the ambience, the style and the sophistication that the hotels are known for and I want to work in that atmosphere.” Such being the situation, the first candidate stands a better chance of securing the admission and, later on caving for himself a respectable position in the wonderful world of hospitality. Why? Because the first candidate looks at hotels as a discipline of working and making people happy whereas the second one looks at it as ambience and glamour.
Hospitality is a rare combination of art and science; it is a profession that the people who are pleased to please people can enjoy the most and thus tend to work passionately towards crafting careers in hotels or creating their identity as entrepreneurs, owning hotels, guest houses, inns Bed-and-Breakfast establishments, as restaurateurs, travel trade professionals, event managers, caterers earn a name in the field of entertainment and retail.
Statistics clearly show that over the last 3-4 decades, with the influx of several international hotel chains – Marriott, Accor, Holiday Inn, IHG, Radisson, there has been a 400 % growth in the number of hotels and about 500 % growth in the number of hotel rooms in India.
Not only has the growth of these numbers complemented correspondingly the growth of business in airlines, railways, surface and marine transport, they have led to the need for bigger airports, larger railway stations and has also created numerous avenues of employment for tourist guides, dealers in handicrafts, artisans, transporters, drivers, and the ones engaged in entertainment. Most of these sectors thrive, flourish and prosper under the umbrella of leisure, business and conference travel.
The more the number of establishments, the more will be the need to have skilled manpower and that brings in the necessity of having more and more of hotel management institutes, catering colleges, airline crew training institutes and foreign language institutes. The number of hotel & hospitality management colleges that have opened in India over the last two decades far surpasses the development in this area during the period of 40 years preceding.
Another angle which has encouraged this industry is banking as a much larger sum of foreign exchange needs to be handled and accounted for. We all know that there are several advantages connected with the foreign exchange earnings as it can give a boost to numerous other sectors like industry, health and agriculture – these are the long term rippling effects, which are indirectly created by the hospitality sector.
During induction of new students, I always tell them that every human being, regardless of age, has some amount of the spirit of hospitality deeply inherent and embedded in him/her, as we all warmly greet our guests, make them comfortable, look after their needs, their security, and always look forward to having them over soon again. As a matter of fact, the guests’ preferences are usually provisioned and taken care of even before they arrive at our house and we usually go to fetch them from the airport or from the railway station. This is exactly what hospitality is all about – pre-empting guest needs and making sure that they go back happy, contented and willing to visit our house again.
This domain has just one direction of development – Upwards. No surprise as to how this sector has achieved the second position in the foreign exchange and GST earnings for the Indian economy. Looking at this potential the government is contributing incessantly towards the tourism development by setting up Government of India Tourist offices in the major countries of the world, is revamping the tourist destinations, monuments, old palaces, nature and health camps, introducing luxury trains like Palace on Wheels, Maharaja express, The Deccan Odyssey, the Golden Chariot, Royal Rajasthan on Wheels. These trains give to the travellers an unprecedented experience, unique only to the Indian subcontinent.
People working in hotels, by virtue of their close and a personalized attention to the guests, are at advantage to develop a close affinity with them and get to learn about their culture, their traditions, language and indeed about their businesses. This brings about an element of finesse in them and they develop themselves into potential people for public relations, customer-relationship managers and make notable positions into banking and retail.
Talking about whether hospitality is a science or an art, I would say that it is a combination of the two. There is a lot of science involved in the room reservation system, in accounting, finance and a lot of art in cooking, customer handling, treatment of grievances and, generally assuring that they are kept happy.
The demand for trained and semi-trained staff in the hospitality sector, especially in hotels has increased so much that even if fifty more institutes were to come in, churning out hundreds of fresh students every year, the real demand would still not be met. All the hotels have the same mission – that to extend a warm greeting to the guests, look after their comforts, their basic necessities, wants, desires and to make sure they come back again. This is what is practices amongst hotels spread out over the seven continents of the world. This peculiarity throws open a world of opportunities for the hotel management graduates to work in any part of the world – all that they need to do is to understand people and, to the extent possible, to speak their language.
These are the different reasons as to why the first choice and preference of most of the younger generation of the modern age stands to be to associate themselves with hotels, to make for themselves promising careers, get to earn a lot of money and accolades and to get so see the world.
Suppliers of crockery, cutlery, linen, glassware, tableware, hollowware, flatware, furniture, bed linen, brassware, ceramic, bathroom fittings, electronics, kitchenware, food preservation equipment, and decoration items used at various places in hotels and restaurants has seen a tremendous growth, so much so that these organisations have started exporting them.
The hospitality sector has brought about notable changes in the general lifestyle and habits of people at large is poised to grow further with full enthusiasm and speed, it is geared to show the world as to how it has zoomed past several other domains and left behind numerous other industries…
