Hospitality Executives in Asia are wiser, smarter and more driven than 10 years ago
Participants at the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management' s recent
Professional Development Program (PDP) were observed by an American faculty member, Mr.
Robert Perry, to be hardworking, demanding of the lecturers and fellow participants and determined to
“get their money's worth”. Perry says that hospitality professionals today are highly inquisitive in comparison to ten years ago, when participants came reluctantly and because their employers required it of them. Furthermore, Perry noted that “hospitality executives these days are very driven and want to learn how to practically apply theory”. Indeed, participants who attended the July PDP courses say that they came to learn the latest management theory as well as to find solutions for operational issues that they are challenged with.
The Professional Development Program is a series of three-day courses geared toward hospitality professionals who have a minimum of two years industry experience or a related field. Participants find that the PDP courses are among the most sophisticated executive-education courses for the hospitality industry. From line-level managers to senior executives, PDP provides lifelong learning opportunities necessary to advance business and personal success. Participants can earn Cornell certifications by completing a pre-determined sequence of four to six PDP courses.
CNI offers PDP courses twice a year, in January and in July. Nearly 1,000 professionals from over 40 different countries have attended PDP courses in Singapore over the last two years. Hospitality executives who participated in the July courses this year were motivated by different reasons.
- Franciscah Munyao, an instructor in Hospitality Management from a Kenyan school participated because she wanted to learn about Revenue Management so that she could teach her fellow lecturers and students back home the art of revenue management as applied to restaurants. She said “I had a lot of questions when it came to the Revenue Management control aspect, especially the maintenance aspect which we take for granted. The course showed me how to analyze the numbers to see how much better we can maximize our opportunities to make money”.
- Enrique Yap attended his first PDP course this year and is already considering the other courses that are on offer in January 2009. His family owns the Manila Hotel in the Philippines and he is using the courses to learn more about hospitality management.
- Jason Rupa works for the Airways hotel in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and manages the hotel's information technology systems. The hotel's management team sent him for the PDP course to learn more about how they could market and sell their hotel on the internet.
The hospitality executives that attend the PDP program benefit significantly from their classmates, who share experiences and challenge each other for better solutions to ongoing operational issues in their hotels.
Vicky Karantzavelou
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Monday, August 25, 2008