Professor takes hospitality expertise to Maldives
Professor takes hospitality expertise to Maldives
By Matthew Trumbull
Copyright © 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Republic of Maldives boasts clear blue seas, solitary sandy beaches and remote island resorts. The qualities that make the island nation a perfect postcard tourist destination, however, also made it vulnerable when the tsunami struck its shores in December 2004, putting a quarter of its island resorts out of service.
In a nation where two-thirds of the jobs are related to tourism, rebuilding the hospitality industry to its pre-tsunami strength has been a critical concern for all citizens and residents and soon they will be receiving a helping hand from Manchester, N.H. Ravi Pandit, a hospitality professor at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, wants to boost tourism to Maldives and he was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to help them prepare future leaders and managers for the hospitality and tourism industry there.
The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, which awards the grants to 6,000 scholars each year. The grant will allow Pandit to work in Maldives for five months beginning this past August. He is doing his own research to identify present and future needs in the industry, and teaching classes and helping the Maldives College of Higher Education fine-tune and develop a four-year hospitality program to replace their current diploma program.
“I’m like the academic ambassador [from Southern New Hampshire] to the Maldives,” Pandit said. “It’ll be a great opportunity to develop the relationship between our two institutions.”
Pandit is certainly the right man for the job. He is not only the program coordinator of the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Management at Southern New Hampshire, but he is also the chair of the school’s hospitality and tourism management program there. When Pandit first arrived at Southern New Hampshire in 1999, he was the first doctorate in its hospitality program. He was instrumental in overhauling the undergraduate hospitality and tourism program, and he developed a master’s degree program in hospitality and tourism management.
The work he will be doing in Maldives will draw on this experience as he trains the faculty, shapes the hospitality program and develops coursework at Maldives College. He will also be doing plenty of his own research and visiting the many island resorts to determine what skills managers desire of graduates coming out of the college.
Though the hospitality industry in Maldives has its own unique flavor, he said, it is still managed in a western style. “Working in the Maldives will provide me with a unique opportunity to teach in a totally different socio-cultural, economic and political environment,” Pandit said.
( read entire article )
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P.S. Download Free Video Documentary
About Maldives
By Matthew Trumbull
Copyright © 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Republic of Maldives boasts clear blue seas, solitary sandy beaches and remote island resorts. The qualities that make the island nation a perfect postcard tourist destination, however, also made it vulnerable when the tsunami struck its shores in December 2004, putting a quarter of its island resorts out of service.
In a nation where two-thirds of the jobs are related to tourism, rebuilding the hospitality industry to its pre-tsunami strength has been a critical concern for all citizens and residents and soon they will be receiving a helping hand from Manchester, N.H. Ravi Pandit, a hospitality professor at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, wants to boost tourism to Maldives and he was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to help them prepare future leaders and managers for the hospitality and tourism industry there.
The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, which awards the grants to 6,000 scholars each year. The grant will allow Pandit to work in Maldives for five months beginning this past August. He is doing his own research to identify present and future needs in the industry, and teaching classes and helping the Maldives College of Higher Education fine-tune and develop a four-year hospitality program to replace their current diploma program.
“I’m like the academic ambassador [from Southern New Hampshire] to the Maldives,” Pandit said. “It’ll be a great opportunity to develop the relationship between our two institutions.”
Pandit is certainly the right man for the job. He is not only the program coordinator of the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Management at Southern New Hampshire, but he is also the chair of the school’s hospitality and tourism management program there. When Pandit first arrived at Southern New Hampshire in 1999, he was the first doctorate in its hospitality program. He was instrumental in overhauling the undergraduate hospitality and tourism program, and he developed a master’s degree program in hospitality and tourism management.
The work he will be doing in Maldives will draw on this experience as he trains the faculty, shapes the hospitality program and develops coursework at Maldives College. He will also be doing plenty of his own research and visiting the many island resorts to determine what skills managers desire of graduates coming out of the college.
Though the hospitality industry in Maldives has its own unique flavor, he said, it is still managed in a western style. “Working in the Maldives will provide me with a unique opportunity to teach in a totally different socio-cultural, economic and political environment,” Pandit said.
( read entire article )
*************************************
P.S. Download Free Video Documentary
About Maldives
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