BASANTA JOSHI
There are lots of hotel management colleges to choose from but it needs some efforts to make it a right decision on choosing a best college. Visit the college, make a small research and choose the best one. It’s a matter of spending 4 years so why can’t you spend 4 days in choosing a college, look at the infrastructure, interact with the faculty members as well as the past students before making a decision. (Highlight)
For students who are aspiring career in hotel or hospitality management, I have a few suggestions, There are lots of hotel management colleges to choose from but it needs some efforts to make it a right decision on choosing a best college. Visit the college, make a small research and choose the best one. It’s a matter of spending 4 years so why can’t you spend 4 days in choosing a college, look at the infrastructure, interact with the faculty members as well as the past students before making a decision. (Highlight) Parents must also be aware of these things as they are the investors.
Hospitality management is one of the most sought after career option in recent times with an encouraging global demand. If you look at the global stipulation you have to start from the number of hotels because that is where the demands come from. Talking of number, there are 4 Million hotels all around the world employing more than 300 million people globally. If you look at the retirement rate, it is 10 percent. So, 10 percent of 300 million becomes 30 million. Therefore, 30 million people are required every year as the same in number of people are retiring and the same positions need to be fulfilled.
Talking about Nepal, according to the Hotel Association of Nepal, 2012, there are 2500 hotels employing 3 Lakhs people. Calculating the retirement rate at 10 percent, 30 thousand people are retiring every year. So, 30 thousand people are required each year.
But let’s consider the status of the institutions that are offering courses in hotel management to cater the growing demand. There are almost 35 hotel management colleges and around 100 smaller hotel training institutes in Nepal. The total number comes around 150 institutions for Hotel management education in vocational as well as academic all over Nepal. They are producing six to seven thousand people every year. Now you can compare the demand of 30 thousand being met by supply of 7 thousand. There is a deficit of almost 22 thousand people every year.
But, there is another problem. Out of those 7 thousand available, majority does not want to work in Nepal, they want to go abroad. Only 10 percent of those i.e. only 600 are deployed in our hotels and rest all go abroad. Therefore, our local demand is never fulfilled.
This is happening because everyone wants to work in star hotels and there are only 10-11 five star hotels in Nepal. Even the people are not ready to work in cities like Pokhara or Chitwan; they all want to work in Kathmandu. It is therefore a big challenge for the industry to manage the demand and supply of the employees. Therefore, I feel that 100s of more hospitality management colleges need to be established to cater the global demand and not just the demand of the local market.
Being a landlocked country, I feel that people from China, Bhutan, Maldives and different states should be coming to Nepal for hospitality management education. This is how we can make Nepal a hub for hospitality education. If I have to rate the standard of hospitality education, it will be 40 percent only. If you see the standard of Oberois and Hilton, we lag far behind. Hotel management today is IT driven but our teaching methodology as all manual and not up to the mark. Even if we work in technology, the rating can move only up to 60 percent because we still lake the standard faculty members to that par. To address this problem, we have initiated IMI Swiss course so that the Swiss faculties could come to Nepal and our students could benefit from this exchange.
Regardless the standard, the cost is slightly high if compared to other streams of education, still the cost in comparison to the financial gain the degree gives after the completion of the course is very low. If you compare a chefs’ monthly salary of 4.5 lakhs which we take it for 4 years, it’s very reasonable. But if you look at its bottom to top, one might feel that it takes more than 10 years to become an executive chef. That way too, I feel that the cost is moderate and not too expensive. Hotel Management education comparing to BBA and other discipline is bit expensive because of its nature to incorporate huge practical classes on cooking, bar tending, food and beverage service and housekeeping chemical materials.
It is indeed a rewarding career. In Asian perspective, salary of Food and Beverage Manager on average is 3 lakhs rupees a month, Front Office Manager earns almost 3.5 lakhs, Executive House keeper is 3 lakhs, Executive Chef 3.5 lakhs and the salary of a General Manager on average is 7 lakh a month. Talking on the Nepalese prospective, F & B managers’ salary is at least 1 lakh a month, House Keepers’ and Front Office Manager is around 1.5 lakhs. An Executive Chef of a five star hotel in Nepal has salary around 3-3.5 lakhs a month and General Managers’ salary is up to 6 lakhs. So, it’s really rewarding financially.
Having just a degree in this field does not assure the success and financial reward. Recruiters don’t pay for the degree but for skills. A hospitality management student must possess a good personality, must be dynamic and physically smart. Dynamic in the sense that he/she must be able to communicate with people from different countries in the world. If you are working in the reception, you will be conversing with Japanese speaking English, Germans speaking English and even Spanish speaking English. Therefore, the anticipation of what the guest would speak is necessary.
A hotel management student has to be an all rounder. He/she must be smart, intelligent, a problem solver as there are several problems in hotel every day. A student, who has 90 percent marks but if he/she does not have communication as well as other practical skills, is not desirable in this field.
(Mr. Joshi is the Director at AITM School of Hotel Management, Khumaltar)
