Top Chef, ीं La Carte

Top Chef, ीं La Carte

PUNE: The Taj group, the Oberois and ITC all have one of their own. Now, smaller hotels are also setting up hotel management training institutes so that they get what the biggies have: industry-ready manpower, trained just the way they want them.

Hotel management institutes have mushroomed across the country, with the push that tourism has got through overseas tourists and higher disposable income of Indians who travel.

But manpower is still an issue and the lament of industry remains that these institutes need to upgrade their curriculum. Which is why a clutch of smaller hotels have begun offering training programmes.

“Most of these stand-alone hotel management institutes have not upgraded their curricula, which are out of date,” says Kavita Amarnani, general manager, Studio Estique. She adds that a couple of decades ago, when she was in training herself, students were taught 17-course French menus, “and we were busier studying our French verbs! Where are you going to use that knowledge after spending three years doing the course?”

Three smaller hotel chains, based out of Pune, began their management and catering institutes to meet, first, their own demands and then, hopefully, that of the industry. Two of these — the Estique Hotels Scholarship and the Pride Institute of Hotel Management — will see their first batch of students graduate at the end of the current academic year.

Both are three-year courses, with the Estique programme offering degrees from IGNOU, as well as its own certificates. The third, the Red Carpet Hotel and Culinary Academy, is now two years old and its first batch will graduate next year. The three-year course will fetch students a degree from the UK’s Confederation of Tourism and Hospitality, and Red Carpet certificate.

SP Jain, chairman of Pride Hotels, a chain of star hotels, said of the first batch of 45-50 students, nearly 70% have been retained by the group. “Trained manpower is always required, and with the government talking of adding around 70,000 new rooms across the country by 2011-12, there will be a need for at least one lakh trained professionals,” he says.

On the benefits of running you own institute, he says issues like placements are taken care of because the chain absorbs the graduates. The practical training they offer in their own hotels is something stand-alone institutes miss out on, he adds.

Sajid Dhanani, MD of the Indore-based Sayaji Hotels, a three-star chain with properties in Indore and Baroda , is equally emphatic about the shortage of trained manpower. “A large number of rooms are being added in every city, resulting in a huge shortage of manpower. We manage somehow, sometimes compromising on quality of staff. Now, we have decided to take freshers from institutes, and train them to our standards.”

Some point to the way courses are run by stand-alone institutes. The course usually involves a six-month internship, and these institutes tie up with agents who charge Rs 2 lakh to place interns in hotels in, say, the US or UK. During the stint, students can earn up to Rs 6 lakh. “Why, then, won’t they go to the US or UK for an internship?” an official says.

This presents a problem for the domestic industry. Despite Pune having over half-a-dozen institutes offering a degree or diploma in hotel management and catering, there is a huge shortage of manpower, given that close to 75% of each batch goes abroad.

“In Pune, 1,500 rooms were added in the past few years. For a five-star, deluxe property, average staff required is 2.5 people per room. So while over 2,000 jobs are available in Pune alone, many students are going abroad. The industry will now have to start considering graduates from Tier II towns like Ahmednagar, which have hotel management institutes but no hotels,” says Ms Amarnani.


Source Link: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/services/education/Top-Chef--La-Carte/articleshow/5946727.cms