Marius Stols from The IIE’s School of Hospitality & Service Management
explains why Africa is in need of this qualification
There is a great need in Africa for academically trained hospitality professionals particularly when one considers that many executive positions in the African hospitality industry are not filled by those from the continent.
This is the view of Cape Town-based Marius Stols of The IIE’s School of Hospitality & Service Management which has campuses in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
Says Stols: “Recently a training manager at one of the largest hotel groups in the world told me that not one of the executive managers at their Africa hotels was from Africa. A big contributor to this disparity was that there were no degree qualified managers available from Africa.”
In response to growing market demand, paired with an increasing global shift to a service-focused and experience economy, The IIE has established the IIE School of Hospitality & Service Management. Through the school, The IIE seeks to specifically address the rapidly expanding need for service, hospitality and customer-centric education, spanning entry-level through to management-level qualifications including certificate, diploma courses and the Bachelor of Hotel Management (BOHM).
“The BOHM speaks directly to an industry need,” Stols explains. “In addition, the hospitality qualifications not only prepares the student for the hospitality industry, but provides them with a wide range of service oriented skills and trains them to think, plan and execute with the guest and consumer in mind. A hospitality qualification does not bind one to a single industry either. The BOHM is, in essence, a business degree with a hospitality foundation.
“Formal and recognised hospitality qualifications have become essential. Five years ago it was still debatable whether it was needed, but now it is commonplace for hospitality operations to require employees to have formal qualifications with hospitality qualifications being preferred, even for entry level positions.”
Stols himself holds a BCom Hospitality Management and has worked at Pezula in Knysna; Tsala Treetop Lodge near Plettenberg Bay and Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, now home to the prestigious Klein Jan, headed by SA’s only Michelin star chef, Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen. He has also worked in the UK and Saudia Arabia.
He also has Post Graduate Diploma in Higher Education from Stellenbosch University as well as a BCom Industrial and Organisational Psychology degree from the University of South Africa.
“I’m currently persuing a BCom Honours in industrial and Organisational Psychology which I plan to follow with a Masters. I’m taking my studies further to enhance my own teaching practice. It has been part of my (and our) teaching philosophy at The IIE HSM that although we are in higher education, our approach is much more aligned to training.”
Stols’ advice for anyone wanting to make a career in the hospitality industry is to gain a hospitality qualification from a reputable institution.
“It is not a guarantee that you will progress faster than others, but it will provide you with valuable opportunities, amazing support and a good start to networking opportunities.”
Stols, who believes that South Africa has an impressive reputation around the globe, says there will undoubtedly be changes to the industry as we come out of the pandemic.
“We need to make a shift in our thinking processes. Don’t think in terms of the ‘new normal’ otherwise you end up focusing on the word ‘normal’ instead of ‘new’, which prevents change and adaption. The reality is things have changed and the hospitality industry must adapt. We must ask how can we innovate? How can we do things better? What do our guests want? Hospitality is service. The best way to improve service, is to know what your guests (customer/client) want and need and provide those needs that they might not even realise they have.
“I think people make a mistake thinking that service as an industry is limited to the hospitality and retail industries. In today’s digital world I cannot think of a single occupation that does not provide a service in some way. Because of this many employers miss out on amazing employees – those that have studied hospitality. Hospitality is synonymous with service; you can’t have the one without the other. Service management entails a whole range of things and within the programmes offered at IIE HSM we address a multitude of these aspects as it relates to service and management and service management.”