THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs

Over the past decade, even an activity as seemingly physical as travelling has moved online, with those venturing away from home preferring to arrange their trips on social networks and through online travel agents and expecting a digitalized guest experience once they arrive.

Those changes have reshaped the hospitality industry, pushing it into adapting quickly, professionally and sustainably while never losing sight of the bottom line. And with the tourism boom set to continue, Dusit Thani College, widely considered as the pioneer in hospitality training, is continuously gearing up its classes to embrace future challenges.
“We take all these factors into account in designing our courses. We recognise that some sectors such as banking are over supplied in terms of labour, as most people turn to conducting their business online, so we have created short courses for those who are interested in furthering their studies and gaining professional experience in the hospitality industry in order to make a successful career change,” says Atthawet Prougestaporn (Ph.D), acting rector of the college.

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs
To address the increasing complexity of the industry as well as the need for qualitative competencies such as forecasting and budgeting, Dusit Thani College has been cementing its close relationships with the world class hotels, particularly in the Dusit Group, since 1993 and has also entered into collaborative partberships with the prestigious Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, Switzerland, Le Condon Bleu, France, and the ASO College Group, Japan, among others. So far, the college and its networking alumni have produced more than 5,000 fully qualified individuals for the industry both here and abroad. 
The college offers five academic programmes ranging from undergraduate through Master’s degree and executive level qualifications. It also offers its students training opportunities in renowned hotels, the opportunity to study abroad as well as the possibility to travel in and outside the country. Average class size is 40 students. 

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs
“The Dusit Thani Hotel School opened on Srinagarindra Road in Bangkok in 1993 under the leadership of Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui, who was chairman and managing director of Dusit Thani. At that time, Thailand had a shortage of manpower, knowledge and experience in the hospitality industry, due in part to a lack of educational institutes and training programmes involved in the academic development of the hotel business,” Atthawet explains. 
“Despite technology disruption, hospitality service mindedness is still far from being replaced by AI. However, the courses still need to improve in term of innovation and look at new perspectives for marketing and design. Students are encouraged to think out of the box and break with traditions. For example, here they can research how to design the guestrooms or learn all about housekeeping. Subjects need to be integrated. Instead of learning about the spa, which neither parents nor students like, we offer it with a new perspective on wellness and tomorrow’s medicine. In the field of cuisine and kitchen management, we want our students to be entrepreneurs, so we allow them to run their own restaurant at the college first. If they fail here, they can learn from their mistakes without any fallback. That doesn’t happen in the real world,” Atthawet explains.

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs
“For tourism too, we encourage our students to look at a new perspective of storytelling. Why should they memorise history and repeat it over and over again? Working as a tour guide is hard but it is possible to create a different story, redesign the route, think more about how to make it interesting than simply following the old ways. Thanks to our good relationship with many hotels, we often invite guest speakers to share their experiences.”
Dusit Thani College aims to meet international hospitality standards by delivering specialised, practical training for the industry and to support Thailand’s developing hotel business. In 2011, Dusit Thani College opened a new campus in Pattaya, one of the most popular tourist destinations.

Teaching Thais to take the top hospitality jobs
Atthawet says one of the problems the students face is lack of confidence in finding well-paying jobs particularly when they see Thailand struggling to compete with rising tourism rates in, for example, Vietnam. “The country’s development has been stuck in a middle-class mindset for a long time. Skills improvement is very much needed. We have to ask ourselves why famous chefs have to be Westerners and the Thais merely work as assistants. Or why students who graduate from aboard land the better jobs. Our programmes encourage students to move towards hotel management so that they too can acquire the first-rate professional skills, creativity and innovative outlook they need to take the top jobs.”

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