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Published on : Friday, January 29, 2021
The pandemic and lockdown devastated the tourism and hospitality industry world over. Also, tourism dependent-businesses have been majorly affected since the Covid-induced lockdown was implemented. Now, experts are thinking that the primary aim of the industry will be on sanitation, safety and wellness.
As tourism is slowly making changes with easing of curfews and restrictions, institutes that provide hospitality and tourism related courses have started upgrading their curriculum to draw maximum students.
“We are planning to add a course on ‘Ayurveda food combinations’ to the curriculum of our hotel management programme as people are increasingly becoming immunity conscious,” said Dr Sanjay Modi, executive dean, faculty of business and arts, Lovely Professional University. Hoping that more and more job offers in the aviation sector will be generated as people have become more conscious about social distancing and hygiene, Modi explained that the university introduced BBA in Airlines and Airport Management from the current academic session.
“Due to the pandemic, people are becoming more inclined towards air travel than any other mode of transport because of the concerns around social distancing and hygiene. Hence, we feel it will lead to more job creation in this sector,” Modi said.
Indian School of Hospitality introduced its postgraduate programme in Service Operations Management last year in the middle of the pandemic.
“We are adding more elective, specialisation options into the postgraduate programme keeping the Covid-19 phase in mind,” said Kunal Vasudeva, COO and founder, Indian School of Hospitality. He further added by saying that COVID and the resulting fragility of the situation have made students and parents evaluate closely in regard to their future choices.
Dr. M Sajnani, director of Amity Institute of Travel and Tourism in Noida explained that they are reforming their curriculum to meet the needs. They are introducing courses on digital marketing of tourism-related products and services, emerging destinations management, destinations safety and protocols etc. “Besides, we believe that short courses can further skill our students. Therefore, we will introduce certificate courses in tour guiding, wildlife guide, heritage guide, short-term course in wildlife appreciation and naturalist, and in heritage and cultural appreciation,” he said.
As the batch of 2020 got less number of job offers, the hospitality institutes claim the situation is changing for better. ISH predicts “they will see 25-30 per cent students get into the startup space”.