--BY Upashana Neupane 

 

There was a time when the government had to pay people to come and take training in hospitality management. But gone are those days when people thought working to provide hospitality was not dignified. 

 

People’s perception toward hotel and hospitality management has obviously changed with tourism gaining higher importance in the economy. Education in hotel management too has evidently boomed. Programmes in hotel management, however, are not merely about culinary skills - the courses groom students for success in an ever-expanding sector that now encompasses not only hotels and restaurants, but also hospitals, airlines and event management. Moreover, opportunities are not limited to domestic boundaries. Nepali students are in demand and well-placed in the international market because of their innate sense of hospitality. 

 

Arabian countries, Japan, Canada, USA and Europe are some of the regions where Nepali students have been in high demand. “The increasing trend in international travel for health and education has kept the hospitality business thriving,” says Principal of the International School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Samjhana Basnet. “This sector thus never goes out of business,” she says. 

 

Courses in hotel management eventually lead to overseas internships in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Switzerland and India, as well as job placements there.   

 

Initial days 

Hospitality education started in Nepal in 1972 to address the need of a growing sector.  The government, with the help of ILO and UNDP, established an institute called Hotel Management and Tourism Training Centre (HMTTC) where the training included housekeeping, kitchen management, front office management, waiting services and so on. Such trainings continued for 10 years until there was need for middle level management training. The HMTTC then got help from UNDP to upgrade trainings for kitchen supervisors, restaurant captains, housekeeping managers and office managers. 

 

In the years that followed, the HMTTC decided to turn the training courses to academic ones. Thus, in 1999, when Tribhuwan University included a hotel management course under the faculty of management, the HMTTC got converted into a college named Nepal Academy of Tourism and Hotel Management NATHAM) - the only public college to run a Bachelors in Hotel Management (BHM) course in Nepal. 

 

While NATHAM is the first institute to run the BHM course in Nepal, Pokhara University (PU) too got permission to run a similar programme later. Presently, there are estimated 26-30 colleges public and private in the country under the affiliation of Tribhuvan University, Pokhara University, Kathmandu University and Purbanchal University. There are numbers of hotel management schools under international affiliation too.

 

“Although BHM courses in Nepal are as good as those abroad, we need to make some changes in the way we teach,” says Ujjwal Satyal, Head of Department, NATHAM. 

 

Future Prospects

An increasing number of hotels and resorts across the country are creating additional jobs opportunities in the industry. With tourist arrival maintaining an upward trend, the sector is going through an interesting phase with massive investment coming in from domestic as well as foreign investors. The increasing demand for hotel rooms which is expected to grow in the future is strengthening the confidence of 

investors too.

 

Moreover, a number of world-class resorts being established in Nepal raises the possibility to increase demand for highly skilled professionals. Nepal will have to produce huge bunch of skilled manpower to cater to the growing demand from hotels and resorts that are seeking to hire people for kitchen service, housekeeping, food and beverage, and sales and marketing.