THSC AND MARRIOTT SIGN MOU

The partnership between THSC & Marriott India will engage 5,000 apprentices through its network of 90 properties, preparing them to meet the demands of the tourism and hospitality sector.

Tourism & Hospitality Skill Council (THSC) has announced its collaboration with Marriott India to promote apprenticeship in the tourism and hospitality sector. As part of the collaboration, Marriott will engage 5,000 apprentices through its network of 90 properties in the country. The apprentices will be provided with an opportunity to receive hands-on experience at Marriott hotels for developing broader expertise in the sector, preparing them to cater to the demands of the tourism and hospitality sector.

Neeraj Govil – Senior Vice President, South Asia, Marriott International, explains, “We have signed a MoU with THSC and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). As a part of this programme, Marriott hotels across India will service training centres, where we will provide necessary skills to the youth to have a career in hotels. Essentially, they come through a qualifying process, they attain a skillset, which helps them to pursue their career. The big part about this is the outreach to the local community. As an operator like Marriott, this will help fuel our talent pipeline, not just for Marriott but for the industry at large. We have 60-70 hotels under construction, and as they open, they will become a part of this partnership as well.”

Rajan Bahadur, Chief Executive Officer, THSC, believes that tourism and hospitality industry has a huge potential to absorb the best-class talent in the country. He says, “Our objective is to empower the youth by

Marriott hotels across India will service training centres, where we will provide necessary skills to the youth to have a career in hotels”

making them industry-relevant. The service sector is a great contributor in the country’s economic growth and our aim is to impart global standards of training to build the capabilities of semi-skilled and unskilled workforce through apprenticeship. Our objective is to scale up the apprenticeship programme in the country in collaboration with the industry to bridge the gap between the industrydemand and availability of skilled manpower. We have about 300 industry partners and that’s what makes our canvas so large and interesting but the whole intent is to take it to the next level.”

Manish Kumar, MD & CEO, NSDC, said, “Apprenticeship has been recognised world-wide as the key to providing right training and acquiring world-class talent. The introduction of optional trades widens the scope of apprenticeship in sectors such as services, retail, tourism, IT& ITeS among others, enabling the industry to design their own courses and creating a skilled workforce matching their needs.”

He further adds, “This kind of partnership is a fantastic development. Apprenticeship is something that the Ministry of Skill Development has been emphasising for a long time. There is a lot of seriousness to take this to new levels and the support which the Ministry is giving is resulting in better partners coming in. Tourism and hospitality are sectors where more can be done within India. Besides this, we also need a centre of excellence where training could be done at much higher scale.”