The travel and tourism industry is the largest single industry in the world, making more money than any other for many countries around the globe. It's not surprising, as vacations are a universal family activity across nearly all cultures. With a hospitality management degree, you can have a successful career in the travel and tourism industry.
"The Big Three" are Travel, Tourism and Hospitality. There are really three branches to the industry, with each focusing on particular areas of the tourism industry as a whole. A hospitality management degree will give you an excellent overview of what you need for each of these, or you can choose to focus on one in particular by choosing elective courses that concentrate on one area.
The Travel Industry includes airlines, railways, cruise lines and motor coach lines. Flight attendants, cruise directors, booking agents and others who assist passengers are all part of the travel industry. Some of these individuals pursue specialized training through particular training programs offered by employers, although promotions are generally offered first to those who also have an Associate's or Bachelor's degree in hospitality management or tourism.
Those working in the Tourism industry are most often working for a travel agency or tour booking company. They will be expected to be familiar with the geography, weather, history, customs and culture of locations around the world. They will also need to be aware of customs procedures, regulations, required paperwork and other necessities for anyone traveling to foreign countries. Some individuals will also work privately for large corporations to coordinate travel plans for company executives, or work for Human Resources departments to make travel arrangements for employees and their families during relocations.
The largest by far is the Hospitality industry itself, which includes hotels, resorts, casinos, restaurants, golf clubs and convention centers. You could manage any of these facilities, coordinate events such as golf outings or fundraisers, or be the food and beverage director for fashion shows and special events such as political campaigns.
Becoming a bridal consultant is another option that is rapidly gaining popularity. Today's couples are planning larger, more elaborate weddings that require intensive planning down to the last detail. Destination weddings also require the specialized talents of an event planner with travel experience.
Event planners are also in high demand for conferences and conventions for professional associations and lobbying groups. These types of positions are ideal if you prefer a fast-paced environment and a change in your routine rather than a 9-to-5 job behind a desk, since you will be expected to be on-site at each venue to oversee the set-up and organization of every event.
Positions in the travel industry require business, finance and customer service skills. You will need to provide excellent customer service, enjoy working closely with individuals from diverse backgrounds, and be able to cope with a variety of unexpected emergencies with grace and calm. You will also be working on a daily basis with complex schedules, rates and financial data in most travel careers. The coursework for a Hospitality Management degree should prepare you for all of these scenarios.
Typical coursework might include hotel management, food & beverage management, conference & seminar management, tourism management, and human resource management. Staff training & development in the hospitality industry is a popular program, as are programs in guest services oversight & analysis, hospitality accounting & oversight, marketing & merchandising, food service design & staffing, and purchase and cost control. Each school will offer variations on these courses and may offer concentrations on particular areas, so compare them to find the one that offers the courses that are best suited the type of career you are looking for.
With the low margins in the hospitality industry, you need every edge you can get. You've probably seen many articles on how to spot the bad employees. But what about warning signs that your own performance is lagging? Here's a list of mistakes to avoid which will help you get the most out of your employees and your hospitality business, be it restaurant, banquet, hotel, or casino.
Have no annual plan. This is the measly scheduling that all businesses have to do. Hospitality is a seasonal industry - scheduling maintenance and review tasks during non-peak hours will help you keep everything running smoother. This doesn't mean you have to stick to the plan when the inevitable complications arise, but over all your foresight should keep things running smoothly.
Don't invite inspections. Whether it's a fire code or a health code, periodic "friendly" inspections will help you identify problems and fix them early before they become accidents that will result in an "unfriendly" inspection. It also puts polish on your halo in the eyes of your insurance company.
Don't spend time in the trenches. Time and again, the most successful hospitality managers show up on the event floor or the dining room every now and then and pitch in for a shift. It helps communication between you and your staff, who have the opportunity to point out what needs fixing instead of trying to write you a memo. It boosts morale in the lowest levels of staff - their respect for you skyrockets when they see you aren't too much of a big shot to get your hands dirty. And of course, nothing puts your staff on it's best work ethic like having the boss working elbow to elbow with them.
Ignore the calendar. New Year's Eve coming up? Oh, well, we'll be busy anyway. Summer here? Well, let's see how the vacation crowd treats us. Instead of sitting there letting the holidays and seasons happen to you, you could have planned a special event or an aggressive marketing campaign in advance to make sure you take full advantage of the rich times. Making the most of the fat times helps you survive the thin times.
Ignore your competition. Nothing is more directly competitive than the hospitality industry; three restaurants on every corner, a chain of hotels along each street. You should be constantly thinking of what you can offer your customers that your competitors don't.
Micromanage the staff. The flip side of being in the trenches should be the confidence to lead with authority by delegating responsibility efficiently. If you feel you have to follow up every detail and make every minute decision, your staff will feel that you lack confidence in their abilities. You should just be able to give an order and have the employees scurry to carry it out, reporting back to you only if there's problems. Micromanaging is also a sign of a work-a-holic boss, and those aren't always the most successful ones.
Expect the business to run itself. Avoiding micromanaging doesn't just mean you can spend all week at home and check in on the phone twice a week. Nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and if you aren't there, things are likely to skew farther away from how you originally designed them to run.
Don't innovate. What could possibly be creative about our business? It's just providing the service of basic necessities of life, after all. That's when businesses fail; when they just keep doing what everybody else is doing. Innovation is when you offer a new service feature that nobody else does, create a hot new menu item and promote it in advertising, and a new luxury to your hotel property. Every time you innovate, you are temporarily in a market of one until your competitors copy you.
Ignore the computers. A hidden drain on the hospitality industry is the high cost of software. Maybe LucasFilm needs that $950 copy of Photoshop, but you're just as well off making your advertising flyers on the free Gimp. You really don't need Windows office software when the free PC systems out there such as Linux can run Open Office for free - and a spreadsheet looks the same in both. Your guest check-in system will run just as well on a free Unix system. And so on. Hospitality businesses are one industry that consistently overspends on business software. Your needs are not that fancy; any program that can open, edit, and save a text file will do just fine for writing that memo. And why pay for anti-virus software when a system like BSD or Linux doesn't get viruses in the first place? Every program you run should be free of cost, and for that matter you can run a hospitality business on "outdated" hardware, at least for a small-scale company.
Ignore the Internet. Why should a hotel have a web site? So guests can get directions to the place and make reservations online. Why should a pizza parlor have a website? So customers can order online. Why have wireless web access in the lobby? Because traveling business guests bring laptops and want to stay online while they're there. Web space these days goes for as cheap as $5 per month, and building a website on it will be a one-time expense of $100 to any random online freelancer. You pay more than this to advertise in newspapers, yet the Internet can reach millions more customers!
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