Hospitality Management Institutes – The Skills Training Industry Perspective | Prashanti Jaykumar

Over the past few decades, tourism has steadily increased worldwide, India included, contributing to an increase in revenue, job opportunities and capital investment. Recognizing the need of the hour and realizing the importance and necessity of hospitality education, the Government of India initiated and supported the setting up of Hospitality Management institutes across the nation. Although hospitality education has a deep-seated position in the world of education and the students displaying passion and interest in pursuing the same is ever increasing; there has hardly been any significant change in the curriculum. The teaching methodologies or the pedagogies used therein; which would ensure the development of employability skills in keeping with the changing expectations of the industry concerned is lacking. This is indeed a cause for great concern! Ideally, the hospitality management programs must fulfill the expectations of the students, the teaching fraternity and the industry. Hence, the curriculum must not only deliver the skill sets required in the workplace but also the academic rigour, i.e. a balance of both theoretical and practical knowledge. But today, the skill set the industry expects the aspirants to possess has seen a sea of change. Where hard skills or core competencies were taught in institutes and demanded by the industry a decade or two back; today soft skills or non-technical skills are what an entry level hospitality management graduate is expected to excel in, even more than the hard skills. This shift in the paradigm of industry expectations needs to be incorporated in the curriculum of hospitality education. A planned approach towards inculcating these soft skills in hospitality management students should be undertaken at the earliest, and institutes should use various pedagogies to build in these soft skills within their students. This paper looks into ways and means of ensuring the same at the institute level