There’s more to hospitality than just manning the front desk

The tourism and hospitality industry saw an 11.5 percent growth from 2016 to 2017, and it’s projected to grow by 7.6 percent this year, according to CCA Manila’s Liza Morales at the 2018 F&B Report Summit.

This creates a domino effect of more hospitality establishments, restaurants, jobs, and students. While the youth in most parts of the world still aspire to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, the Philippines is gaining quite a number of students in tourism and hospitality management thanks to the Filipinos’ natural inclination towards service.

Unfortunately, misconceptions, which include a career in the front desk, make it more challenging for hospitality management graduates to attract new prospects and be accepted in fields aside from hospitality. Dusit Hospitality Management College’s (DHMC) managing director Lars Eltvik doesn’t think it should be the case.

“A hospitality management degree has got all the business, administration, and management courses as well. Students use the same marketing literature learned in other courses but directed towards the hospitality context,” he says.

Hospitality graduates can choose careers beyond the usual options, and even start a business of their own. “They know finance, they know management, they know organizational behavior, and what we find from many hotel schools is that graduates have enough of the specialized skills to go into banking, insurance companies, sales jobs, and so on.” Eltvik believes that what separates hospitality management students from business management students is possessing the people skills, the right work ethics, and the learnings that come through the experiential path of hospitality education.

DHMC is the first institution that integrates the learning experience of students with its commercial hotel, dusitD2, in the same building. As managing director, Eltvik oversees the operations of the hotel as well as the college. He has been teaching in the industry for more than 30 years.