Hotel Management Syllabus In India

Years ago, a student after passing out from his alma mater had joined a reputed five star hotel in India at the supervisory level. To his dismay, he soon found out that his knowledge was inadequate for the industry, particularly in the control area. Fortunately, he had a benevolent mentor, who helped him to learn the nuances of the hotel business once again. Later, nearly after five years, he had joined a catering college as a teacher and tried to bridge the gaps between theory and practice for the students. That students is “yours truly”.

Again, working in the industry for several years, I had joined a small catering college as a  ‘Senior Lecturer’ (not by design). I was saddened to see that what was taught fifteen years back, same things were repeated in the class rooms. Same old I.H.M ‘hand-outs’ were distributed among the students. Many teachers dictate notes in the class room (wasting precious time), while students dutifully note it down, committing spelling mistakes, more often than not.

The college gained popularity, soon became one of the premier hotel management institute in eastern India, so I did grow – becoming ‘Study In-charge’, followed by as ‘Deputy Director’, then ‘Vice-Principal’, and finally ‘Principal’. As the college was running multiple hotel management courses under various Universities and Government bodies, I had access to the different syllabuses of different Universities.

All the syllabuses were primitive by nature, based on what was followed in the industry, forty or fifty years ago. There were several ironies – firstly, AICTE prescribed 3 years Diploma syllabus is based on National Council IHM syllabus, after studying the same students from some colleges are awarded the ‘degree’, whereas, others are awarded diploma. The same syllabus is tougher than the syllabus of 4 years degree course under different Technical Universities, unfortunately, some students are getting a job with lesser pay package and position because the diploma they hold, others are getting a better job because of their degree, despite their inferior knowledge (in many cases).

Syllabus committees of Universities are filled out with bureaucrats and academicians, with no experience of working in a hotel. For the namesake, one or two extremely busy hoteliers are nominated to the committee, who rarely find time to attend such meetings due to their business. As a result, the students are still busy with learning difference between A.C and D.C current supply, ‘Whitney System’ of Hotel reservation, but majority of them are unaware of what is ‘Gordita’, or ‘Crostini’, or ‘Carpaccio’ , or ‘Bruschetta’. They are even ignorant about recent changes in the laying of cutlery on the tables.

Paradox is that despite not having specialization in Front Office, I had to teach ‘Whitney system’ many a times, as the young generation of junior teachers have not seen this obsolete method in the industry. Once, I had raised the point in an University meeting that why such obsolete ‘Whitney system’ is still in the syllabus; I was told that students must know about the history. Moreover, the syllabus somehow incorporates an inflexible attitude among the students. Occasionally, I have seen students leave a good  job, which he/she obtained through a campus interview, just because “the hotel is full of non-techs’; or ‘the chef/manager does not know anything, he does not follow many of the things we have learnt in the college’.

Barring IHMs, majority of the institutes do not have a proper reservation and PMS software in the college. On the other hand, IHMs use obsolete model of Fidelio software to train their students, whereas, OPERA from MICROS and Hotelogix are more popular hotel software packages worldwide. Students are not encouraged to become an entrepreneur. No practical exposure to Revenue Management; PMS or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is given. Pedagogy itself is in a most pathetic state. Rarely teaching is done though project work, simulation and role play.

Students are not told ‘why’. For example, my teacher taught me that no wine is served with Indian food, but he did not tell us ‘why’. Later, I found out that it was so due to tannic nature of the ‘Old World’ wines, which do not match with Indian food. ‘New World’ wines are light, fragrant and less tannic in nature, hencethey really go well with the Indian food, but then again the students are not made aware of the same fact.

Today, thousands of my students are working in the hotel and allied industries in senior positions, I am sure that they have reached the point  through their sheer dedication, ability to learn, and hard work; not because of the syllabus and my teaching. I hope a day will come when the syllabus committee will be manned by the professionals from the hospitality industry, and our colleges will be at par with the best hotel management institutes across the world.