Hotel trade booming

Hospitality is a global industry, says Sandy Baijal, marketing manager for the Pacific International Hotel Management School.

With more than 400 international hotel corporations and a million hotel rooms world-wide, the industry continues to boom, she says.

"In New Zealand, tourism is the country's top foreign exchange earner, with 1,550,000 annual international visitor arrivals making a $4.8 billion industry.

"And this is only the tip of the iceberg. If tourism pundits are to be believed this figure could very well double in the next few years."

Apart from the obvious infrastructure that needs to be set in place, people need to be trained for the challenges that lie ahead, she adds.

"The industry now demands hotel managers with graduate-level management and professional skills."

Sandy Baijal says that New Plymouth-based Pacific International is helping lead a quiet revolution in training future managers for the industry.

The school, she says, is New Zealand's only privately-run residential hotel management school which offers an intensive Qualifications Authority-recognised two-year Swiss diploma in hotel management.

Established in January, 1995, as a joint venture between the Taranaki Polytechnic and Australia's Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, it is "fast gaining acceptance" as a premier hotel management studies institute.

"The school started out with an initial intake of 24 students and today has over 95 graduates with a 100 per cent employment record," she says.

Some 85 students - half from 15 overseas countries - are now on campus and that number is expected to go up to 140 in January.

The course is developed in association with the International Hotel and Tourism Training Institute, of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and the Australian school.

Students graduate with both a New Zealand and a Swiss diploma in hotel management and a third diploma accredited by the Australian Hotel Review Panel.

"The international diploma allows students to be employed in any part of the world," Sandy Baijal says.

"We knew we had a good education product, but what we were not ready for is the unprecedented growth we have seen in the last three years," says the director and principal of the school, William McCullum.

"We have had to increase the faculty and infrastructure substantially to cope with this demand."