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Hotel management
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Hotel management courses are available worldwide and attract a varied international student body. Many schools are now concentrating on developing the business components of their courses, as well as teaching the vocational skills needed.
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Hotel management courses are a popular choice with international students, mainly due to the good employment and immigration opportunities that go with the successful completion of a course.
Dean McCallum from the Pacific International Hotel Management School in New Zealand believes that these two factors are the main attraction for many of the Indian, Chinese and Russian students that are the top nationalities on their hotel management courses. “The course offers great industry placement opportunities and is a pathway to residency,” he says.
In Canada, Alice Hsu at the Vancouver Premier College of Hotel Management says that their four-, eight- and 12-month diploma programmes in hotel management attract students from China, Korea and Taiwan. “For these countries, the tourism/hospitality industry generates a lot for their economy and is one of the industries their government does promote,” she says. “As a result the job market is there and it attracts people to get into this industry.”
The employability of graduates from hotel management courses is often associated with the vocational element of many courses that require students to undertake a significant period of work placement as part of their studies. Peter McGunnigle from Oxford Brookes University in the UK says that their MSc programmes in hotel management “have been enhanced greatly by the opportunity to incorporate internship opportunities”.
He adds that international students are particularly attracted to their postgraduate programmes. “There has been some increase [in enrolments] over the past three or four years from more recent accession countries in central and eastern Europe,” he says. “This trend is probably the result of the value placed in some cultures on continuing academic studies to Masters level and the opportunities it opens up within students’ countries.”
With such strong links to the job market, hotel management education is a growing sector for many further and higher education providers. At the European University, which has campuses in Barcelona, Geneva, Montreux and Munich, hotel management courses are a new development. Robbie Nichols at the university says that interest in their hotel management courses has been spread across a diverse range of nationalities. “[Hotel management] is a recently evolving degree programme at EU, but based on the level of interest we anticipate that it will definitely be one of our more requested degree specialisations before long,” he says.
While some education providers are diversifying into hotel management, other established hotel management universities are expanding to accommodate demand from new students. At IMI University Centre in Lucerne, Lukas Ritzel says, “We will build a completely new campus in Lucerne to support the growing demand from students to study at IMI University Centre – every term [we have had] over 40 more students during the last few years.”
In the UK, Scotland’s Strathclyde Business School has recently launched one undergraduate and two postgraduate courses in hospitality and tourism management that will be taught across the Departments of Management and Marketing. As the school already has a business focus, the new courses will give hotel management students a thorough grounding in core business areas. Susan Hart, Dean of the Business School, says, “We will draw on the expertise of our growing industry advisory group as the fast-moving tourism sector continues to evolve.”
The integration of hotel management courses into more general business education is also a trend that can be seen at the New York University Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management in the USA. Lalia Rach at the school says that the entire curriculum of their hotel management courses has recently been under review and new material added. “We added courses that emphasise the structure, function and operational aspects of starting and running a business whether it be in tourism or hospitality,” she says. “We also added a new senior level course on leadership in Crisis Situations and Emerging Issues in recognition of the increasing pace of change in our industries.”
In Switzerland too, hotel management education is being developed in order to keep up with the changing needs of the industry. Jolanda Rechsteiner from the Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality in Chur says that the element of work experience is becoming more important and their Bachelor degree course requires students to spend one year on a work placement. “Furthermore, psychology, sociology and cross-cultural competence have become more significant elements and are fully integrated into the study plan,” she says.
For all hotel management education providers, however, frequent consultation with the industry is key. Gerald Lipman from the International College of Hotel Management in Adelaide, SA, Australia says that they constantly seek feedback from graduates and hotel executives. “For example in May 2009, we had a graduate who was Finance Director of a Hilton property and two other graduates together with both local university professors and our accounting lecturers and we spent a day reviewing the accounting subjects delivered over the four years of the programme.”
At the European University, Nichols says that the success of the university relies on having qualified professors that come from the business industry. He adds, “We have professors that act as consultants, managers and in other capacities from directly within the hospitality industry, which provides our students with the latest in each specific discipline, whether it be marketing, public relations, human resources etc.”
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