Recently, Sommet Education acquired a strategic stake in the Indian School of Hospitality (ISH), founded by hospitality professional Dilip Puri along with other key partners. This partnership will help the global educational entity support the development of its two institutions in India – École Ducasse and Les Roches.
Hospitality is home to a young and enterprising talent pool, which needs to be renewed regularly. As the sector emerges from the pandemic, hoteliers are faced with the dilemma of identifying and retaining skilled hotel employees. After all, their speedy business recovery depends extensively on their ability to deliver superlative guest experiences, which is possible only if they have remarkable employees on-board.
Benoît-Etienne Domenget, CEO, Sommet Education tells Vinita Bhatia that as pent-up travel demand returns quickly, hoteliers will need to tackle this issue head-on to ensure their continued profitability. This is exactly where Sommet Education’s alliance with ISH will come in handy – it will give the industry access to well-trained and skilled labour force who can hit the ground running.
While the hospitality business is seeing green shoots of revival, how can hotels manage guest experiences and associate expectations without compromising on profitability?
In hospitality, the guest experience is provided through the product, such as the location and the type of property facilities. But, it is by essence a customer-centric business and a service industry where the employee and soft skills play a central role.
In that sense, the guest experience is directly linked to the human talent a hospitality business is able to source or develop. Adding value to the guest experience isn’t, therefore, necessarily costly.
Applied business projects are included in curriculums so students can work on solutions that will shape the future of the hospitality industry.
While globally hotels and restaurants are seeing scarcity of labour, India has heavily staffed companies that are continually right-sizing? Is this a bad business move when it comes to talent pool management?
Talent pool management is certainly a key issue for all businesses, and it is critical in the hospitality industry. There isn’t an exact calculation common to all business to have the certainty that the system put in place is the ideal one. It is not especially in terms of numbers or quantitatively that it has to be thought through.
In our institutions, we implement a dual model of education and transformative learning based on acquiring the necessary academic knowledge while developing practical hard and soft skills.
The latter enables the right level of understanding, management and interaction and may support the qualitative roll-out of operations without especially focusing on the ratio between number of customers and employees.
Earlier, teaching was about imparting knowledge in formal lessons, and measuring knowledge learned and memorised. Today, education is a transformative journey.
Considering the recent bout of furloughs and layoffs, has the hospitality industry lost its attractiveness amongst potential employees?
The hospitality industry is a broad industry. Often associated only with the hotel and food and beverage industry, the acquired skills and knowledge can be applied in banking, retail, real estate and many others. This sector is about offering the best service and experience possible. As it offers a wide range of career, it remains highly attractive.
How can hoteliers address the constant uncertainty amongst their existing staff about employability and career development? Can continual education become a vital tool to upskill the workforce and retain them?
Adapting to evolving client needs and employer requirements is now an imperative to stay attractive on the job market. For this matter, Sommet Education and its institutions continuously work on developing pathways and learning opportunities and programmes to encourage professionals to develop their knowledge. Among postgraduate diplomas, Master’s, MBA and online certifications, we have developed a great number of programs have been developed to meet a plurality of expectations and profiles to support their differentiation on the job market.
How can hoteliers also make acquisition of newer skills more interactive, rather than a tedious textbook exercise, which often results in employees paying scant attention or retaining little information?
Many years ago, teaching was about imparting knowledge in very formal lessons, and we were measuring knowledge learned and memorised. Today, education is a transformative journey.
Teachers are now in a position akin to that of mentors, accompanying students through their skill building. Digital tools are used by our teachers to complement classroom teachings by allowing more flexibility, personalisation and in-depth learning. These can be adapted to the needs of each student, dynamising the learning experience and enhancing knowledge acquisition. Today we concentrate on developing personalities.
How can hotel companies use education to help their taskforce to not just theorise about business and guest experience transformation, but also implement these experience indicators in real-time?
We strongly believe that knowledge is not only acquired in a classroom. Hence, we join theoretical and practical acquired knowledge.
Internships, case studies, practical workshops and field trips, are examples of the tools we use to confront our students to the reality of the industry and the challenges they will face on joining the professional world.
We have a strong bond with the industry and its needs, which is highly important to be able to understand how to prepare our students to excel in their future role. With ISH, students are offered various international pathways with opportunities to study overseas and gain global experience which will support them in setting-up international standards in their role.
Can continuous training allow employees to develop and build a real career plan not just within the unit but within the organisation and maybe even the sector?
Evolution is part of a professional journey, and whether is vertically – growing in terms of responsibilities and role – or horizontally – moving to one department to another – professionals who cultivate their curiosity for the industry and are eager to learn, will have plethora or opportunities to seize, within a given organisation or the sector.
Lifelong learning is key in one’s career and enrolling a specialised degree can boost careers and grow one’s international network. Sommet Education has around 400 programmes ranging from foundation education to specialised education for professionals that are delivered on-campus. 70 of these are online and finally blended with a mix of both.
How can hoteliers also establish benchmarks and analyse performance to identify gaps and areas for improvement, considering the dynamic landscape?
Applied business project are included in curriculums. The main objective is for students to work on solutions that will shape the future of the hospitality industry. The students are analysing a given situation provided by businesses in activity, research the gaps between guest expectations and reality of the sector, and design solutions to the problem identified.
This way they learn how to take the right and most efficient actions and to participate in shaping the future of hospitality.
