A Brief History of the Hotel and Hospitality Management Major
Formal education in the hospitality industry is a relatively new enterprise, a product of the post World War II economic boom, especially in the United States. Prior to that, training for necessary and available positions within a hotel varied depending on the individual need of the establishment, and was conducted mostly in the form of apprenticeships or indentured servitude — in fact, that system goes as far back as the Roman Empire, when small inns were built every twenty-five miles along Roman roads for traveling officials.
In 1922, after persistent proposals from chief hotel moguls, as well as from the American Hotel Association, the first undergraduate hospitality management school was founded at Cornell University; hospitality was undergoing a reform, with a new class of opulent and cosmopolitan establishments gaining popularity, and managers wanted specially trained professionals to add a sense of pomp and polish. Cornell’s program, and several others around the country, came into a “golden age” after the war, and more and more schools of hospitality were founded at universities across the nation, continuing on to today, where the field has expanded to include casino, restaurant, cruise ship, and resort management.
Delving Into the Hotel and Hospitality Management Major
In addition to surveys of industry history, practices, and conventions, the hospitality management curriculum also includes study of business operations, as well as important aspects of event management like facility coordination, activity planning, and customer service. Common courses include festival and event management, lodging administration, hospitality facilities operations, food service operations, hospitality law, facilities design, hospitality and tourism marketing, and hotel revenue and cost control.
Other important coursework will cover topics like food and beverage management, and menu planning—many schools even offer wine appreciation classes. Professors will usually coordinate their lectures with readings from textbooks, and many management courses will feature speaker series that corroborate the material with personal anecdotes and guidance.
Though theoretical and financial training are valuable, most employers still recognize and seek out applicants with practical experience, so internships or part-time work within the hospitality industry are encouraged and sometimes mandatory parts of the curriculum. Working part-time or as an intern provides students with experiential learning opportunities—namely helping organize and manage events—familiarizing them with actual site protocol and giving them a safer environment to apply the knowledge and skills they have gleaned from coursework.
Degree Levels:
Associate
The standard degree for hospitality management is a bachelor’s, but there are a handful of associate programs, including several online options, designed primarily for entry-level industry employees looking to augment their professional experience with undergraduate management courses.
Substantively, an associate degree will include much of the same material as the bachelor’s — facility and event management, food and beverage service regulations, basic accounting, finance, and business, menu planning, and marketing—but will not deal as extensively with any of them, and internship opportunities are more scarce, though part-time work would be conceivably more manageable than in a bachelor’s program.
Bachelor’s
Most students interested in hotel or restaurant management will enroll in a four year program, terminating in a Bachelor of Arts degree. The plan for the B.A. in hospitality management covers all the material listed above, and usually includes an internship or work component in its curriculum.
Students will learn elementary and advanced employee, client, and resource management theories and practices, and will gain practical experience in the field working internships or part-time positions in the hospitality industry. Taken in conjunction, the coursework and internship or work experience will complement each other and give students both the ideological and functional experience needed to succeed as a manager in the real world.
Master’s
Master’s programs are intended to refine and expand previous knowledge of the hospitality industry, by introducing more interdisciplinary material, i.e. business strategies, management of a larger variety of establishments and of larger pools of resources, development, financing, entrepreneurship, and responsibilities at the executive level.
Outside experience is also required, by means of a practicum, to further develop knowledge and skills as a manager. Students with goals beyond management, but still within the hospitality industry, are the best candidates for master’s programs.
Doctorate
At the doctorate level, students will no longer be studying material to be applied in the industry, but instead will be deepening their knowledge in order to teach future students of Hospitality Management the requisite theory and skills of hotel, restaurant, casino, or resort management. Other areas of emphasis are research methodology, educational theory, as well as any coursework done for the minor.
Supplementing Your Hotel and Hospitality Management Major
One of the virtues and advantages of the hospitality management major is its great flexibility and capability to focus on one particular branch of management, providing both a comprehensive knowledge of management, and a more specific knowledge of a niche. Within the major, students can concentrate in lodging, wine & spirits, country club, catering, gaming & casino, sales & marketing, spa, restaurant, event, tourism, and international hospitality management — depending on the institution — each with their own mini-curriculum that is designed to prepare students for work in the sector of hospitality most attractive to them.
Furthermore, students can choose minors in beverage management, business, or marketing (among others) that add another layer of value to the major, and broaden job opportunities for graduates. Choosing one or another of the concentrations, and pairing the major with a minor, students will be directed toward whatever area they choose, gaining insights into the unique challenges posed by their selected sector and tools for solving them.
If, for example, a student were interested in management, but did not want necessarily to work in a hotel, she could opt for the spa concentration and take courses such as spa administration and forecasting or spa branding and development to be better prepared for work as a spa manager. Because there is so wide a spectrum of hospitality occupations, the hospitality management degree can be applied in a number of different arenas, and with consistently positive outcomes.
Learn More About the Hotel and Hospitality Management Major
- Princeton Review Summary
- Tourism OpenCourseWare
- Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research
- International Journal of Hospitality Management
The Hotel and Hospitality Management Major in the Job Market
Employers hiring managers look for a careful, tactical balance between theoretical and practical knowledge in prospective employees. A candidate with no formal education but with several years of real-world experience is attractive, but a candidate with those same years of management practice along with a four-year degree, demonstrates dedication to excellence, both in terms of becoming familiar with the standard knowledge base of the industry, and applying that knowledge to the work experience. The result is a thoughtful, discerning manager who can review her own methods in light of better ones, and can change her behaviors to benefit the hotel when she discovers an inefficient or problematic process.
The goal of the hospitality management major is to teach students exactly that combination of theoretical and practical knowledge that will both impress employers and, more importantly, make for successful management, no matter the establishment. However, because students generally graduate from hospitality management programs with the appropriate mixture of knowledge and experience does not immediately — or even necessarily — guarantee them positions in the industry, especially not management positions. That does and can happen, but what is more common is for graduates to start in entry-level or assistant positions and be promoted from within up to management positions.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of hospitality managers is projected to increase by 5% within the next decade, due to a growing travel and tourism industry and more lodging facilities offering a wider range of services such as event hosting. Still, individuals with the most relevant educational and related professional experience have the best chances for employment; in short, the degree will boost students’ chances of getting a job.
Careers You Can Get with This Degree:
