Under the direction of the former global design director for W Hotels, the program is taught by adjunct professors from the hospitality industry, with an emphasis on real-world experience.
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has recently created a Master’s of Hospitality Management program, Skift reported, as part of an effort to make hospitality more of a career than an “accidental occupation,” according to the program’s executive director, Gray Shealy.
According to Shealy, hospitality education has been slow to evolve with the times, and many graduate schools are teaching coursework that’s not entirely relevant to the industry today. Prior to his hiring, Shealy was the global design director for W Hotels. He says Georgetown was specifically searching for someone with extensive corporate hotel experience outside of academia to develop the course curriculum and run the program, in an effort to avoid duplicating what other hospitality schools are doing, Skift reported.
“Hospitality education hasn’t always typically been a top priority on CVs when hiring for hospitality positions,” said Shealy. “At many of the big schools in hospitality, their graduate programs are more focused on research, ultimately training students to go into a doctoral program, and preparing them to become professors, and less about educating people to go into the workforce.”
When Frits van Paasschen was hired as CEO of Starwood Hotels in September 1997, with no previous experience in hotels, it marked a turning point in hotel executive development. As hotel companies at the time were shedding their equity stakes in physical hotel assets, they were freed up with flush cash to develop more hotels and more hotel brands. Delineating those brands well in a crowded market became paramount. By the end of the 1990s, running and operating a hotel company wasn’t about running and operating hotels. It was about brand building, Skift reported.
“So now you have Starwood being run by a bunch of Nike execs who came from branding, who came from retail, who came from marketing, and who really signify that company’s focus,” said Shealy. “With this type of approach at Starwood, and many other companies, that changes the game for everybody. And even though the industry has been quite slow to accept that, we’re seeing how people interested in executive positions need to differentiate themselves in the industry in different ways, other than the traditional, experience-based CV.”
To answer that demand, Georgetown’s graduate hospitality program is taught by adjunct professors who are currently employed in the hospitality sector, as opposed to tenured professors who sometimes have never worked in a hotel. The adjuncts are bringing real world experience into the classroom, who can explain the context around any of the class materials as they apply to the industry today, Skift reported.
Another benefit of having working hospitality pros teaching graduate level curriculum revolves around the importance of making connections in the hospitality business. The thinking is that students today have an advantage when they can meet as many influential tourism and hospitality professionals as possible, Skift reported.
“I see the classroom as not only a way to learn about the foundations of hospitality, and the academic theories of hospitality, but also learn from the people who have done it for many years, and learn how they run the business of hospitality,” said Shealy. “At the same time, it’s also about meeting significant players in the industry because at the end of the day, hospitality is largely about who you know. So the university is also looking at itself as a business model, and not only an academic model, which I think is quite different.”
The course curriculum for Georgetown’s Master’s of Hospitality Management program consists of core classes and four executive tracks focused on Brand Management & Guest Experience Design; Development & Asset Management; Global, Regional & Local Practices; or a customized combination of all three for students aspiring to be innovators in the industry, Skift reported.
Most importantly, the coursework is designed to tackle major industry disruptors trending today, including Airbnb and online travel agencies (OTAs), as well as more subjective skills that hotel executives need to thrive in high-powered corporate settings, Skift reported.
“In general, something really left out in traditional hospitality education is leadership, because the notion of how to navigate through a corporate environment and advance has largely been left out of the classroom,” said Shealy. “So we teach things like how to network, or conduct yourself in a meeting with people from different cultural backgrounds, and understand their decision making process. Or how do you become a great speaker, or deliver an elevator pitch to a CEO in 30 seconds? These sound basic but I think they are very cloudy waters for people entering the industry.”
Shealy suggests that it’s critical for his graduating students to come out of school with the ability to speak authoritatively about the brand-building machinery underpinning the global hospitality industry of today, Skift reported.
“One of our primary educational thrusts is largely about building brands and selling brands, and the value of marketing and branding in terms of customer loyalty,” he said. “Because the Marriotts and Starwoods of today are basically turning into giant loyalty programs.”
The report did not make any specific references to club management components.
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