In hospitable hands

Any society or country is often judged by the hospitality and civility the people show towards those who are visiting, either for long periods of time or short trips. ‘Atithi devo bhava’ is a term we know well here in Nepal, where guests are given the utmost respect and ensured a comfortable and enjoyable stay. It is of little surprise then that given the accelerated speed at which globalisation is making movement possible all around the world—with people from one end of the earth travelling or migrating to the other with growing frequency—the tourism and hospitality sector has risen in importance. For young graduates in Nepal today, the hotel management and hospitality industries have been offering increasingly promising career prospects in an arena that is only bound to get bigger as time goes by.  

 

In the last decade or so, the number of colleges that incorporate such courses have seen a veritable boom, accompanied by a change in mindsets about what the field really entails. Gone are the days of perceiving hotel management and hospitality as merely involving culinary skills. While food is

 

certainly a big part of the experience, these courses extend much further than that, to encompass the entirety of elements necessary for ensuring guests have nothing to want for. No, this is a dynamic field, one that calls for not just a variety of skills, but also a great degree of professionalism, and it is these very abilities that the many hotel management and hospitality courses hope to impart to their students.