Impact of Corona Virus on Industrial Training of Hospitality Students

By Vinay Rane

With COVID-19 spreading at an alarming rate in India and the world, the hospitality industry has decided to stop industrial training of students immediately. Find out how COVID-19 has impacted the hospitality/ travel industry worldwide and how this has affected hospitality students.

COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease) has affected not just one community, state or a nation but has become a global pandemic. Travel and hospitality industries are the worst hit. A lot of students of hospitality and training school were undergoing industrial training in the capacity of interns at star-category hotels. Such training opportunities are provided to students as a mandatory part of the course, i.e., different diploma/ bachelors/ master’s degree level qualifications run in India by various Boards and Universities. This is in-line with internationally offered courses.

Hospitality training comprises of professional exposure to core areas of hotels namely F&B Service, Culinary, House Keeping, Front Office and if possible, training in other ancillary departments. The aim is to understand real time operations and acquiring industry skills. This finally helps the students to identify the area for their specialisation in future.

As it is an established fact that the pandemic started in China and a lot of cases were then reported worldwide. Businesses are also being prudent and restricting non-essential travel and activities. Due to the fear of community spread through travel and group environments, and due to this the hospitality/ travel industry is feeling immediate impact. Resorts and hotels that were booked by excited vacationers and corporate conference-goers are receiving calls to postpone plans or cancel them entirely. This is hitting the bottom line in a big way.

Many visitors who are COVID-19 positive have travelled to various countries and stayed in 5-star hotels. Hotels where such cases of infected guests/ visitors have been identified, have quarantined specific areas. It is followed by tightening of travel rules and rescheduling of business plans at unprecedented levels. Thus, it is no surprise that hotels which generally had 90%-100% occupancy levels have seen a drop to 10% and the situation of other hotels is even worse.

The food industry has also been impacted as more and more people are staying indoors and stocking supplies from supermarket shelves. People are not having outside food, unless necessary and majority of the restaurants have closed for operations. Events and functions are called-off as public congregations are risky prepositions.

Many countries have stopped flight services, as the infection/ virus is majorly spread through travel.

Due to such a pattern of business, staff has been sent on leave for a period of 3-4 weeks and the industrial training of students has been stopped. Over the last few days, looking at the major number of COVID-19 cases in Europe and other countries, students of ITM IHM and other colleges have been released from their training schedule on permanent basis In India and abroad. Students training abroad have been asked to go back to their respective countries on immediately depending on the flight availability. The hotels are ensuring that minimal staff is present.

Hotels collectively have decided to follow highest standards of disinfection of workplace, frequent health check-ups of employees/ staff, screening of current guests and new guests as well as adhere to all precautionary measures as specified by the government.

We are sure that students are trained in techniques to ensure self-safety and be responsible food handlers. Such a pandemic gives students knowledge on how hygiene and health are important, the vital role they play not only for the hotel industry but for the world.

As of now students are advised to ‘Keep Safe and Remain Safe’ and pledge to guard the world against spread of such future pandemics and always remain alert toward avoiding such incidences.

About the Author:

Vinay Rane is Deputy Manager, Training and Placements at ITM Institute of Hotel Management.