Published: January 28, 2008 12:33 am      

EDUCATION: Hospitality education may be the future of big business

In a lecture hall a short drive from Niagara Falls, students at Niagara University are training to become leaders in the multibillion dollar hospitality and tourism industries. The course, Strategic Management, sounds more like something a student majoring in business would take — and that’s the idea.

“It’s a business,” said Gary Praetzel, dean of NU’s College of Hospitality and Tourism Management. “All businesses have financial goals and financial objectives. If your objective is to maximize profits, you need good managers.”

Niagara University is one of about 200 schools now offering degrees in hospitality, a five-fold increase over the past 25 years. The university’s hospitality and tourism program had about 150 students in 1999 and has more than tripled enrollment to about 460 students today.

The boom in hospitality-related education is driven, in part, by the industry itself — hotels are big business.

The $133 billion U.S. industry grew from about 30,000 hotels in 1987 to 50,000 today. In turn, a record number of students — about 50,000 — are now enrolled across the country in hospitality programs, according to Nicholas Hadgis, dean at Widener University in Pennsylvania and member of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

“There’s been a growth in both hotel industry and occupancy in the U.S. and globally,” he said. “It’s become a major economic engine in many communities around the country.”

That’s especially true for Niagara Falls, a city that has grown economically to rely on tourism.

But for graduates with degrees in hospitality and tourism, plenty of global options await them, Praetzel said, which is why Niagara University offers students real world experience in places like Lake Como, Italy or the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.

“There’s emphasis on being able to manage an international staff of people,” Hadgis said. “Typically, business schools have taught management programs as if they’re universally applicable. But they’re not.”

Niagara County Community College started its hospitality management program only a few years ago and it, too, has been growing at a rapid pace, said Program Coordinator Sue Siegmann, with most NCCC students moving on to Niagara University’s program.

“If you can do hospitality and you can manage, you can work just about anywhere across the country,” Siegmann said. “You don’t have to just stay in one place.”

And far-reaching job prospects mean high placement rates for hospitality and tourism graduates with strong starting salaries.

About 70 percent of graduates from Niagara University’s program enter the workforce with a starting salary of at least $35,000, Praetzel said. Within four years, salaries can double, Hadgis added.

“What you find is that salaries tend to expand very rapidly for the reason being, the management pipeline is very tight,” Praetzel said. “We educate our students for management and the growth potential there is the highest.”

The overall post-graduation placement rate at NU is nearly 100 percent, with many students receiving multiple offers, he added.

Though demand in the industry is expected to grow only about 2 percent in 2008, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, that’s a higher growth rate than 2007 saw. And high turnover means educated workers are in high demand, too.

“The industry itself is growing at a faster rate than the economy,” Praetzel said. “We’re generating good jobs.”

Contact reporter Caitlin Murrayat 282-2311, ext. 2251.