After O/L’s and A/L’s - A career in Hospitality?
The Sri Lanka Institute of To u r i s m and Hotel Management ( SLITHM), throughout its 62 years of existence, have been performing yeoman services to the hospitality industry of Sri Lanka. With the tourism and hospitality industry booming in Sri Lanka at present, the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Institute of Hotel Management, Sunil Dissanayake, gave his views on the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism & Hotel Management and its involvement for the tourism & hospitality industry as follows,
As SLITHM has the ability, the infrastructure, the knowledge, and everything needed to run an organization of this caliber, we are not affiliated with any organization. In my experience, it is organizations without these facilities that enter into affiliations with other organizations. Even in the future, I don’t see SLITHM affiliating with any other organization. We have gathered experience and knowledge including the necessary infrastructure over the past 62 years so that question of affiliating does not arise.
When tourism began as a structured and formal industry in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism & Hotel Management (SLITHM) was started in 1966 .In 1980, the Ceylon Hotel School was moved from Taj Samudra Hotel to Park Street, Colombo. Later, in 1986, it was relocated to Palm Beach Hotel in Mt. Lavinia and again in 1994 to Nawala. Finally, the Institute was moved to its present location at No.78, Galle Road, Colombo 03. Now it is in its 62nd year of operation. The institution changed its name to SLITHM in 2007 in line with the restructuring of the then Ceylon Tourist Board, becoming an autonomous institution coming under the purview of the Ministry of Tourism Development.SLITHM is the most recognized and leading teaching institution for tourism and hotel management in Sri Lanka.
Furthermore, the school fees of the students of SLITHM are heavily subsidized by the Government of Sri Lanka as it is a part of the Free Education Programme of the country and a 100% Government institution. Courses at SLITHM actually cost only 1/3 of their actual value. A course such as we are offering for about Rs. 3000/= might cost somewhere about Rs. 12,000/= outside.
We are producing trained and competent personnel for the hotel industry in Sri Lanka and abroad at present. We have so far produced full Graduates who are holding senior positions in hotel and tourism management in Sri Lanka and abroad. I would like to mention here that we are the only education institution that did not have to close even for one single day up to the present due to student unrest. The employment rate of our Graduates is 100%.
We are hoping to turn out about 7000 Graduates this year in terms of numbers. The year we started it was 2500 Graduates, then later on we doubled that number and in the year 2017 we produced 6200 Graduates.
SLITHM has produced 80 full Graduates last year and as they are qualified in all aspects of the Hotel and Tourism Management field, they have taken Management Trainee positions in the hospitality sphere in Sri Lanka and abroad. As they haven’t completed their studies, other Graduates join the Industry at lower levels. Other students have only got their Diploma Certificates enabling them to be employed in the hotel field. They also come back to be fully qualified once they have acquired experience.
Further, there is roughly an employment requirement of about 15,000 trained personnel according to statistics, in terms of hotels being built and proposed to be built. In 2015, about 140,000 personnel were employed in the hotel sector. We envisage that there will be 110,000 new employment opportunities in the hotel sector by the year 2020. So, then, about 250,000 personnel will be directly employed in the hotel industry by the year 2020.
Our contribution is about 50% of the personnel requirement and the NAITA, The Vocational Training Authority and private hotel schools in the country provide the balance. Fresh school leavers are also recruited by the hotels themselves and trained. So, we are able to bridge the gap that
All the hotels that have been built and are being built should be at 100% occupancy for the requirement of 110,000 personnel in the year 2020 to come into effect. The hotel occupancy rate is at about 60% at present. Hotels will increase their employee intake as occupancy levels go up.
Speaking of our curricula, we are revising that. We did that last year for our English and French curricula and we are exposing our faculty to different training opportunities for them to acquire new knowledge through foreign funding as well as sending them overseas, and during the last three years we have increased the number of our campuses. We had campuses in Colombo, Kandy, Kurune g a l a , Anuradhapura, Bandarawela, Rathnapura and Koggala originally. We opened campuses at Passikudah, Polonnaruwa, Hambantota and Jaffna over the last 2 ½ to 3 years and this month we are opening a campus in Kuliyapitiya. That way, we have increased the number of our campuses to 12.
In creating awareness among employable youth and school leavers about employment opportunities and vocations in the hotel industry, we are working with local and foreign agencies. When we opened what was called the Ceylon Hotel School in the olden days, there weren’t many employment opportunities available. According to the present situation, we have to compete with other professions and industries. Now school leavers and Graduates have a wider employment choice. I think we may not be so glamorous now like we were before, given the nature of other professions and vocations that are available. I think, at entry level, people who join the hotel industry earn much higher than their counterparts in other professions and vocations. For example, at entry level, a waiter might get Rs. 12,000/= as the basic salary, plus service charge, which averages today at about Rs. 25,000/= in Sri Lankan hotels, coming to about Rs. 40,000/= with tips and various other incentives. But, if you go to any other industry just out of school, at the maximum you might get only Rs. 15,000/= to Rs. 20,000/=. That is one advantage of the hotel industry. There are pluses and minuses in every type of vocation
While speech of the chairman-SLITHM