Hospitality Industry Competencies

The competencies required in the hospitality industry are very different when compared to educational institutions, and it has changed over time. Sapienza (1978) in his research states that the hospitality courses must include operations of the hotel, laws related to hospitality and security. Whereas Tas (1983) believed the following competencies to be essential in the hospitality industry:

• Handling guest problems with proper understanding and sensitivity;

• Maintaining standards in a professional way in the working environment

• Poise and professional approaches should be adopted

• Communication both written and oral is of equal importance in the industry;

• Positive customer handling; and

• Striving hard to achieve employee satisfaction

Going by the present statistics there are around 581 hotel management and tourism institutes across India who impart training to the graduates, and offer a bouquet of courses. Respite the huge number of institutes, the present training doesn’t provide a holistic development i.e. it doesn’t make the student employable. The vocational training and education can be a great help and can be adopted by these institutes for better employability in the hospitality

Though India has about 1394 hotels and 81011 hotel rooms as on 2015, given by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the demands doesn’t meet the expectations of the tourists leading to shortage of Infrastructure and human resources and that is where the Entrepreneurship comes to the forefront. Henry, Hill and Leitch (2003:3) state that, “it is now widely recognised that the promotion of entrepreneurship is not only necessary for a healthy economy but also critical for sustaining prosperity and creating new jobs”. The increase in the development of Entrepreneurship has been linked to factors of various ranges, where one of the major reasons are “economic prosperity and that it can reduce unemployment”. The concept of Entrepreneurship can be applied on all the sectors of the economy and to the different organisations, but in the small and medium based industry, individual units and industry face problem in implementing Entrepreneurship thus creates an obstacle for “economic growth, productivity gains and job creation”. It can be said that the entrepreneurs key persons in any industry for promoting economic growth. The contemporary management Entrepreneurship is defined by Wickham (2004) as “ an entrepreneurial approach which is no longer seen as an option but as the only option for managers seeking to enhance the performance of