Economic Advisor MoT highlights Centre’s initiatives

Team Udayavani, Feb 27, 2018, 6:39 PM IST

Manipal: Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration (WGSHA), Manipal Academy of Higher Education organized International Hospitality Symposium on February 24, 2018 at Fortune Inn Valley View, Manipal with the objective of bringing together the industry and academia to explore the changing paradigms and innovative practices within the broader hospitality and tourism realm. The symposium was themed, “Transformation trends in Hospitality and Tourism: Connecting stakeholders to deliver memorable experiences”.

Prof. Parvadhavardhini Gopalakrishnan, Principal, WGSHA welcomed the gathering and spoke on futuristic technological concepts like virtual reality, space travel and teleportation and its impact on hospitality Industry. The Keynote speaker, Mr. Gyan Bhushan, Economic Adviser, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India & Chief Executive Officer, National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology shared his views on the issues and challenges faced by HR in the industry, including skill levels, manpower requirements and communication. He highlighted various initiatives taken by the Ministry of Tourism such as 24×7 toll free multilingual language information helpline, issuing e-visa to international tourists, e-ticketing at monuments, Swachh Paryatan and so on.

Chef Alexander Lee Sanchez from California, former Executive Chef of The Table, Mumbai took the audience through his journey to becoming an eminent chef and gave an insight on entrepreneurship and the various challenges that come with it. “Struggle, dedication, patience and perseverance” are the prerequisitess for becoming a chef,” he emphasized.

Mrs. Monica Suri, General Manager of Marriott Jaipur engaged the students by using various hash tags like ‘#bae’, ‘#yolo’, ‘#mirl’ as a pretext to all key points of her presentation and emphasized on how an individual can use these terminologies in terms of hospitality and tourism. Other resource persons who spoke were: Mr. Ramesh Takulia, Learning and Development Consultant, Taj Hotels, Delhi;  Mr. Vineet Mishra, General Manager, JW Marriott, Pune and  Mr. N Krishnan, Ex-General Manager, ITC Kakatiya, Hyderabad. Chef Thiru, Vice Principal WGSHA gave the vote of thanks.