Career in Hospitality
As humanity finally started escaping the grappling of Corona virus, many industries made a comeback after hibernating throughout the pandemic period. The hospitality sector was majorly affected by this. An added lop side for the hospitality industry was that even in times of less income generation the Back Office Operations continued to cost the same as before.To reduce this cost, these companies across nations cut down their staff and offered work-from-home opportunities to their employees.
However as the threat subsides, people seem to be ever so keen to visit their favourite places again presenting a giant opportunity for everyone wanting to enter the hospitality industry.Speaking about Hospitality and Tourism industry, India ranks 7th among all the countries. India is a developing country and there lies immense potential in the uncharted heritage of our rich country. India is endowed with highly diverse and unique landforms and climatic zones from the mighty Himalayas to the great plains and a long coast. Parallel to that runs the hospitality industry which caters to tourists and locals alike. Hospitality industry in India is termed as a ‘sunrise industry’ as there lies a serious potential in it and as of today contributes to nearly 7% of the country’s GDP.
India is a country which embodies the principles of hospitality within its very basic tenets. One is not unfamiliar to the phrase ‘atithi devo bhava’, literally meaning guest is God. So, India becomes a lucrative and a natural place for the hospitality industry to emerge. Especially after liberalisation and the opening up of the economy in the 1990s, the hospitality sector along with many others got the boost they needed to be at par with the international standard.
There are usually 4 basic categories of the Hospitality industry in India.
The first one is lodging which includes hotels and the different types of accommodations for visitors. Even resort management isincluded in this category. A good hotel service includes proper banquet operationsand housekeeping services ensuring everyone’s health and safety.Hotels in India are categorized into the star category and heritage category. The top hotels in India include Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Marriot International, Radisson Blu Hotelsetc.
The second category in the hospitality industry is food and beverage.Much of India lives in poverty and as a result there is a huge disparity in the organized and the unorganized sector of the food industry with around 70% constituting the latter. However, as India sports the largest number of millennial population and an immense amount of young people, the food and beverage industry finds a natural habitat in this country. India’s rich diversity has an impact on its foods and beverages resulting in an endless number of permutations of taste variations in the cuisines offered.
The third major category is transportations which forms the backbone of the travel and tourism industry. With a very broad and intricate railway and road network, traversing the length and the breadth of the country, India caters well to the transportation department. In the previous decades even air travel has been made more and more accessible to the common man. All of this acts complimentary to the needs of a healthy transportation system essential for a flourishing hospitality industry.
The fourth category includes theme parks and amusement parks. Both of these names are used interchangeably for each other. These amusement parks usually spring up in and around urban places and attract the people out of the mundaneness of their everyday lives. This particular sector employs around a lakh people all over India in a year.
Hospitality Industry has become one of the fastest-growing sectors offering a vast array of employment opportunities with lucrative salaries. Thus, Hotel Management courses after 12th have become extremely popular amongst students.A career in Hotel Management can be pursued in three ways – Diploma, Certificate, and Degree. The degree course is a three-year course. The certificate course can be of as short as six months and the diploma courses are of two years.There are many hotel management subjects to choose from making this a very dynamic subject. These include Communication, Hospitality etiquettes, Hotel housekeeping, Event management, Front office procedures, Food & production services and the list goes on! While in India the top colleges offering hotel management courses are the three IHMs of Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, internationally,the best institutes offering courses on hospitality management includeEcole Hôtelière de Lausanne, Cornell University, Griffith University etc.
The jobs that one can aspire after completing a course in hotel management include one of a Tour Guide, Air Ticketing Agent, Executive Chef, Cabin Crew, Travel Agent, Hotel Manager, Rooms Division Manager etc. Even the Government of India provides opportunity to the people to offer their services in the hospitality industry at places such as IRCTCCatering Supervisor/Manager, Sports Authority of India Catering Manager, Teaching Faculty at Hotel Management Institutes, FSSAI etc.
In conclusion we can see that thehospitality industry offers dynamic career options both domestically and abroad and across vast lines of work. With the ever changing needs of the hospitality sector it offers the people employed within it a chance to grow uniquely while adapting to the changes.