For as long as she can remember, Sarah Makki has dreamed of becoming a chef. As an undergrad student at Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Makki was able to explore that career route.
In her second year, she chose to do a 22-week internship at The Noodle House, the flagship Asian restaurant of luxury hotel operator Jumeirah Group. “I was the first Emirati woman to work at The Noodle House kitchen, and this made me a very proud person representing Emirati women,” Makki says.
She is pursuing her Bachelor of Business Administration with honors in international hospitality management, a three-year program. Makki chose the program because she wanted to learn about the broader hospitality business.
The school offers business management degrees with a hospitality focus and is considered the first hotel school in the Middle East to have internationally recognized degree-level courses. The school has about 300 hospitality management students from 60 countries.
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John Fong, associate professor and director of business development and consulting, says his school is an “integral part” of the Jumeirah Group and has an academic association with Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland. He says one of the reasons students choose the school is because it is owned by the company and offers interested students internships and full-time job opportunities upon graduation.
“All our degree programs are triple accredited in the UAE, U.K. and Australia and more than 90 percent of our graduates get a job within the first three months of graduation,” says Fong. “Our graduates find positions not only in major hospitality companies such as Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Kempinski and Jumeirah, but we are also noticing that graduates are getting jobs in non-hospitality companies such as Google, Expedia and even the banking industry.”
Ahmad Al Hallaq, a Jordanian, is now working as an event planning manager at JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai. The Emirates Academy 2014 graduate earned his MBA in hospitality management; he previously received a Bachelor of Science with honors in international hospitality management from the school. In a testimonial posted on the school’s website, he said he now has the confidence in his skills and qualifications to “go all the way to the top.”
For Arab students like Al Hallaq, who are from other countries and study at Gulf universities, places like the UAE bring direct access to job opportunities in the tourism and hospitality industry. Studying abroad can also allow them to obtain international exposure and experience in the industry to apply back home in their own countries.
Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts the UAE’s leisure and entertainment market potential at 45 million visitors by 2021, with international tourists comprising 30 million, and another 15 million from residents and their friends and relatives. Additional theme parks, the report states, will attract 18 million visits. The supply of hotel rooms in the UAE is expected to double by 2020, from approximately 100,000 rooms in 2014. In addition, the nation’s food service sector is set to increase by half to $7.5 billion in 2018.
Emad Monshi, a lecturer in tourism and event management in the tourism and hospitality management department at King Saud University, says in Gulf Cooperation Council tourism destinations, the trend has been to attract major events to the region.
” Qatar, as you know, has won the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and two major sporting events in 2017 and 2019. Dubai, UAE, has won the bid to host the 2020 Dubai Expo,” says Monshi. “Huge government projects are currently taking place at these two countries to increase their tourism capacities.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia‘s tourism sector is expected to create more than 400,000 jobs in the next five years, according to the Human Resources Development Fund, a government agency. Monshi says current trends in Saudi Arabia include “the establishment of more than 60 new tourism and hospitality institutions in the last decade, new government regulations, new government bodies and a few new government strategies.”
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Abdullah M. Alsharekh, dean of the college of tourism and archaeology at KSU, says the tourism and hospitality management department was established to meet national demands for skilled professionals in the industry. The school offers undergraduate degrees in archaeology, tourism management, hospitality management, heritage resource management and tour guidance.
“Our students have been in continuous demand by leading hotel chains and travel agencies in Saudi Arabia, not only during their training program, but also after they finish their mandatory practical courses,” says Alsharekh.
Alsharekh says travel agencies and tour operators provide many job opportunities for young graduates, particularly in tourism management and tour guidance. He says there’s especially demand for graduates working in tour guidance, considering more than 10 million Muslims worldwide visit Saudi Arabia annually to perform Islamic rites in Makkah and Medina during hajj.
The field of tourism and hospitality is broad. Some students may find they develop new interests as they go along, like Emirates Academy student Makki. When she first began the program, she originally wanted to be a chef, but her internship and studies have since opened up other opportunities.
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“If students have a particular interest in the hospitality business, a great way to gain valuable knowledge is to partake in a ‘work exposure’ in a hotel near their homes or schools,” says Makki. “This would allow them to experience the industry firsthand before they choose what they would like to do.”
Makki will be graduating in the fall of 2015 and as a scholarship student sponsored by Jumeirah will work in the company. She will begin her training as a hotelier in the National Development Programme, which she says “aims to educate and train Emiratis to become future leaders in this sector.”
Dubai winning the bid for Expo 2020 has brought the city into the limelight, Makki says. She believes events like these will help bring economic growth to the industry, but in particular “amplify growth and opportunities in the tourism and hospitality sectors” for all students. All good signs for tourism and hospitality majors.
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Arab Region Tourism, Hospitality Boom Bodes Well for Students originally appeared on usnews.com
