With the Ministry of Tourism having entered into collaboration with the prestigious Cornell School of Hotel Administration, USA on Thursday, Indian students can gain on-campus training in the school’s very own Statler hotel in New York without having to go through the rigourous process of admissions to the US universities involving the complicated GREs and TOEFls.
According to the officials, the proposed collaboration will be carried out in two phases. In the first phase, experts from Cornell School will study the curriculum of BSc in Hospitality and Hotel Administration and interact with various stakeholders and visit Indian training facilities before giving their recommendations. In the second phase, faculty development programme will be taken up for various Institutes under NCHMCT. All this will entail no extra cost to students of the BSc programme, but they will receive a much higher level of education.
“Proposed academic collaboration will be important to the preparation of goal of achieving growth of tourism through guests satisfaction. Our Institutional versatility also has to grow and expand to be responsive to this new emerging reality,” said K Chiranjeevi.
Tourism Ministry has also proposed to start a Dual Degree post-graduate Programme, where students will complete one year in India and then proceed for one year in Cornell Campus at Ithaca, New York. After successful completion of one year at Cornell, they will be awarded the Master’s Degree in Hospitality Administration (MHA) by Cornell and its credit will be transferred for Master’s Degree in India. Students will be awarded dual degrees from Cornell and National Council for Hotel Management & Catering Tec
hnology (NCHMCT,) IGNOU.
Ministry of Tourism has fixed target of 12 per cent growth in tourist arrival for the 12th Five Year Plan period. It is projected that with this growth rate, the sector will lead to additional employment to 2.5 crore persons directly and indirectly. In the hospitality sector alone additional requirement of manpower will be approximately 36.18 lakhs.
“For achieving the target of 12 per cent growth we require effective servicing of the sector at every level. Conversely, if the service in this sector is in unskilled hands than anticipated delivery will not fructify,” said Chiranjeevi.
“Since the domestic tourist has its own momentum, foreign tourist arrival needs to be focussed on. Therefore services offered by the sector have to be internationally benchmarked for the foreign tourists to make them feel at home,” he said.