Chris · September 14, 2007
Go2, a B.C. tourism industry resource estimates that our accommodations and restaurant industries will soon have 36 percent more management job openings than people available from the labour pool to fill them. Overall, this could mean a deficiency of over 8,000 skilled employees and managers between now and 2015. Meanwhile, up to one-third of our current industry leaders in senior and executive positions are in the Boomer bracket. These experienced managers will start to retire in the next five years.
Clearly there is a serious need for new employees and managers in B.C. (and across Canada), but there is also enormous opportunity brewing on the horizon for our next generation of hospitality employees. There’s nothing like being in demand, and capable people starting a career in hospitality will certainly be wooed by the industry in the coming years.
Although the hospitality trade remains one of the few industries where people can still achieve management positions without a university education, that window of opportunity is closing fast. Hotels are now looking past employee experience in favour of college and university degrees when hiring new managers--even for junior positions. Most corporate sponsored management training programs require a candidate to have a university degree to be considered. While yesterday’s hoteliers often worked their way from the bottom-up, today’s hotel managers are more and more likely to possess a university education, if not an MBA.
One of the challenges faced by potential students of hospitality in recent years has been a lack of availability of local programs with a focus on hospitality management. Fifteen years ago when I was looking for university options to pursue a career in hotel management, there was not a single option to be found in Western Canada. This meant that I, like many of my colleagues at the time, had to head east to attend university programs like Ryerson University’s Hospitality and Tourism Management program, or Guelph’s School of Hospitality Management.
For those hungry, inspired managers (or students) looking for a Canadian postgraduate degree in hospitality management, Guelph University has been the only real option. Guelph is known to be a good school, but if living in rural Guelph, Ontario isn’t your cup of tea, you’re pretty much SOL.
Finally a B.C. institution has stepped up to the plate, and has developed new university degrees specifically for the hospitality and tourism industry. Last year Royal Roads University (RRU) in Victoria, B.C. announced their new Bachelor of Arts in International Hotel Management to fill the much-needed void in academic options for our future leaders.
The Royal Roads Bachelor of Arts in International Hotel Management has taken some innovative steps in developing their program, such as working with industry to introduce new program schedules that begin in October rather than September. This may seem like a small thing, but it’s actually quite smart. Hoteliers have long been troubled by the fact that they lose many of their critical summer employees in September for their return to school, but the busy high season doesn’t really end until October.
Dr. Brian White, director of RRU’s School of Tourism and Hotel Management, says the graduate certificate programs will go a long way in closing the mounting skills gap in B.C.’s hospitality sector.
The Bachelor program is a welcome addition in B.C., but I am even more interested in RRU’s new Master of Arts in International Hotel Management.
A first in Canada, the Master’s program is a blend of distance courses and on-campus learning with a schedule that (again) works around the seasonality of North America’s tourism sector. It’s geared to hotel professionals looking to make themselves marketable to a world-wide audience, in all aspects of the hospitality industry.
The MA in International Hotel Management program is a two-year program which includes three residencies: two in Victoria, B.C., and one at an international destination. In November 2007, students from the first intake will begin their second residency period in Dubai--where some of the most dynamic hotel growth in the world is happening.
All of these Canadian university hospitality programs offer solid education and career opportunity (my own experience at Ryerson was excellent), but if you are looking for a post-grad degree in hospitality I would suggest that you take a good look at the new RRU Master of Arts in International Hotel Management...I keep hearing good things about Royal Roads.
Meet Julia. She’s a graduating student of hospitality management at Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland. EHL is a hotel school known to churn out some savvy managers.
