Hospitality and Tourism

Grade: A 99.33%

I wish I could possibly express in a simple blog post just how much I enjoyed this class that is offered as an elective at Christa McAuliffe School of Arts and Sciences. It is an online course that is created by eDynamic Learning.

As described in their CMASAS course catalog:

“With greater disposable income and more opportunities for business travel, people are traversing the globe in growing numbers. As a result, hospitality and tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. This course will introduce students to the hospitality and tourism industry, including hotel and restaurant management, cruise ships, spas, resorts, theme parks, and other areas. Student will learn about key hospitality issues, the development and management of tourist locations, event planning, marketing, and environmental issues related to leisure and travel. The course also examines some current and future trends in the field.”

This was a course in which my work was entirely completed through their portal, so I’m unable to recreate the work I accomplished here in my post. But as all of my readers know, I’m a person who loves to travel.

In the year that followed my completion of the course, I was fortunate to travel on a cruise to Canada and Alaska, a trip to Hawaii staying at four different hotels of varying types, another trip to Disneyworld (in which I got sick… but that’s a post for a different day!) and a brief excursion to the Shenandoah National Park. In these travels, I was able to interact with people in the industry using insider language that I learned in this course. They got a kick out of the twelve-year-old who asked them about things like blocked rooms, ADRs and APRs, and benchmarking.

But this wasn’t just a course that made me memorize impressive terms. It also delved into some of the ethics of the industry and made me think long and hard about what I would do in certain situations. One lesson I found extremely intriguing discussed the concept of overbooking. I could learn both the good (less vacancy, more profit) and the bad (unhappy travelers) of it and come to my own decision. It also tackled some emerging and popular sub-industries including ecotourism and event planning. My eyes were opened to job opportunities that I never even knew existed, much less thought they fell under the scope of hospitality and tourism. For example, I never imagined there would be a specific occupation devoted to getting rid of fire hazards in concert venues to ensure that people are safe and secure. But how essential this must be!

Outside of my Japanese courses, I felt like this was the first course that was truly specific to an industry I find intriguing. I highly recommend it for anyone considering this line of work, or even travelers who’d like to be a little more savvy.