Hospitality education is no longer benefiting from unquestioned confidence, says Kunal Vasudeva, Managing Director and Co-founder of the Indian School of Hospitality. He points out that the pandemic exposed structural weaknesses in the sector, including long working hours, fragile career pathways and limited safeguards, leading students and families to reassess their choices. As a result, Vasudeva says, students are returning to hospitality education cautiously and with sharper expectations. In this exclusive interview with Asmita Mukherjee, he said that generic hospitality programmes are losing relevance and warns that industry growth without a parallel reform in education will only deepen attrition.
After the disruptions of the past few years, are students returning to hospitality education in meaningful numbers? Do you see faith and confidence in the industry being restored among young aspirants and their families?
Students are coming back, but very cautiously. A large number moved away after COVID because hospitality exposed its weakest points—long hours, fragile careers, limited protection, and unclear progression. Families noticed this. Trust was shaken.
What we are seeing now is not blind confidence returning, but selective belief. Students are choosing institutions and pathways that can clearly explain outcomes, global mobility, and long-term relevance. Generic hospitality education is still struggling. Programmes that are honest about careers and build real capability are seeing interest return.
With India’s hospitality and tourism sectors entering a strong growth phase in 2026, how is hospitality education evolving to prepare the next generation of leaders; not just for jobs, but for long-term careers?
The truth is, much of hospitality education is still catching up. For years, it trained students for their first role and hoped the rest would work out. That approach no longer holds.
Where change is happening, education is shifting toward leadership, decision-making, and understanding how businesses actually survive and grow. Students are being exposed earlier to commercial realities, people management, and the pace of operations. Without this shift, growth in the sector will only increase attrition, not careers.
What shifts are you seeing in student expectations today?
Students no longer see a hotel role as the default destination. Many still respect hotels, but fewer want to stay boxed in one format for life. They are looking at food brands, wellness, luxury, entrepreneurship, experiential travel, and service businesses beyond hotels.
They want flexibility, ownership, and the ability to move across roles and geographies. Hospitality education that continues to prepare students only for traditional structures is losing relevance with this generation.
Global hotel brands are expanding rapidly in India. How are they engaging with hospitality institutions to build future leadership pipelines that are both globally relevant and locally grounded?
Global brands are expanding fast, but they are also struggling with talent depth. This has forced closer engagement with education providers. Brands want graduates who can adapt quickly, manage people, and operate within Indian realities while meeting global standards.
The strongest partnerships today focus less on short internships and more on long-term leadership readiness. Brands are looking for reliability, not just scale.
One long-standing challenge has been the gap between classroom learning and on-ground operations. How are innovative training models, live industry immersion, and experiential learning helping bridge this divide today?
The gap exists because hospitality education was designed around skills, rather than capability. That approach no longer works. Today’s industry needs people who can think across functions, manage ambiguity, and take responsibility, not just execute tasks.
The institutions that are progressing are those where industry and academia are working together to build capability. Learning is structured around real work, decision making, and interdisciplinary exposure rather than linear roles. Students are no longer interested in a single career track. They want to build a set of capabilities that allow them to move across formats, roles, and geographies.
This is clearly visible in the market. Programs that remain classroom-led and siloed are struggling. Institutions that treat hospitality education as a capability-building exercise, grounded in industry reality, are the ones seeing relevance and demand.
Institutions that continue to treat hospitality education as narrow training will slowly lose relevance, while those that build capability and quality at scale will define who stays and who exits the sector.
Is India’s hospitality education ecosystem equipped to meet the workforce demands of a rapidly growing tourism economy, especially in Tier II and Tier III destinations?
Not yet, and this is becoming a serious constraint. Tourism is growing faster than the system’s ability to build consistent capability, especially beyond metro cities. The challenge is not availability of people, but readiness and depth.
Tier II and Tier III destinations need professionals who understand local context, service expectations, and operational realities. Education remains heavily metro-focused and often disconnected from regional needs. Unless industry and institutions work together to build local capability pipelines, workforce gaps will widen.
This next phase of growth will not be limited by demand. It will be limited by how quickly education can shift from scale to quality and from centralised models to regional capability building.
How can Indian hospitality education achieve global benchmarks while retaining India’s cultural ethos, service philosophy and emotional intelligence – qualities the country is known for?
India does not lack tourism potential. It has scale, diversity, culture, and experiences that few countries can match. What it has lacked is consistent quality across the ecosystem. Countries that perform well in tourism do so because education, infrastructure, service standards, and policy work together.
Hospitality education has to play a much larger role in this shift. It needs to move from being seen as narrow training to being treated as a serious discipline that drives service quality, employment, and economic growth. When hospitality education focuses on excellence, systems, and capability at scale, India’s cultural strengths become a competitive advantage rather than an informal expectation.
If India wants to unlock its full tourism potential, hospitality must be built with the same seriousness that we apply to STEM disciplines. Quality at scale is the real challenge, and education is where that foundation gets laid.
Access and inclusivity remain critical. What steps are being taken to make high-quality hospitality education more accessible to students across socio-economic backgrounds and geographies?
Access is one of the biggest structural challenges in hospitality education. Talent exists across the country, but quality education, exposure, and confidence do not. Financial barriers are part of the problem, but lack of mentoring and long-term guidance matters just as much.
Institutions that are serious about scale are combining scholarships with sustained support systems. This includes mentoring, industry exposure, and clear career pathways, especially for students outside major cities. Inclusivity will not come from lowering standards. It will come from building capability at scale and supporting students through the journey, not just at the point of admission.
Going forward what skills will define success in hospitality, and how should students choose institutions that truly prepare them for the future?
The next phase of hospitality will reward people who can think across disciplines, lead teams, and take responsibility in complex environments. Technical skills will continue to matter, but judgment, adaptability, and commercial understanding will define long-term growth.
Students should choose institutions that are honest about the industry and serious about capability building. The real markers are depth of industry engagement, interdisciplinary exposure, and graduates who continue to grow well beyond their first role. Institutions that focus only on placement numbers or narrow roles will struggle. Those that build quality at scale will define the future of hospitality education.
