Higher Education is the Future of Hospitality
Higher education is having a large impact on shaping the hospitality industry’s future, a subject that was recently addressed by co-hosts Chris Henry and Omari Head on the Next Gen in Lodging podcast. They touched on how curricula for hospitality students are changing at universities. On the podcast, Head also announced that he has become executive director at Howard University’s Marriott-Sorenson Center for Hospitality Leadership.
Chris Henry noted that hospitality education used to always be discipline-based, either revenue management or, more significantly, operations.
But Omari Head noted that hospitality today is extending to other areas such as construction, retail, real estate, and food and beverage. He noted that universities today need to concentrate on getting students ready to comprehend those cross-links.
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“A huge number of things which we would have thought of as something like, ‘Oh, that is for a particular vertical,’ those borders are now greatly blurred,” Head explained. He continued, “Hospitality’s future is that we need to teach all of those different students what the hospitality industry is.”
To clarify this process, Head cited that the Marriott-Sorenson Center for Hospitality Leadership has a concentration on three areas: tourism and events; finance and technology; and real estate and investing.
He ended by saying that experience in these diversified areas is most crucial in cultivating well-rounded hospitality professionals.