In the past few days and weeks, I have been hearing/seeing the term Digital Transformation a lot. Not just on my friend Are Morch’s Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/HotelSocialMediaCommunity) but yesterday on a new video that showed up on my YouTube feed.
The video was for a new degree course and as was to be expected, it was slick and well made. The main message in the video was that the hospitality industry is experiencing a digital transformation that requires (future) hotel leaders and managers to understand and lead this change.
Now don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree with this statement.
As an industry, we seem to have largely missed the bus on digital, with mostly outsiders from the tech industry coming in and turning our business model on its head. And as more and more Gen Z’ers enter the industry (both as employees and guests), digital is no longer going to be a nice to have but a must have!
But while this may be the case, and it is always good to study digital transformation (either as part of a degree course or a standalone), what struck me in the video is how non-digital the entire learning experience was.
The lecture rooms were like they were a 100 years ago and so were the teaching methods (in person, in class, using whiteboards, frontal lectures etc).
Its all well and good to talk about digital transformation for hotels but what about for the hospitality education industry? When will we begin to question archaic means of (in-person) education and replace it with modern, digital alternatives?
Now Im sure that the little village where the University is located is lovely but do future managers really need to go somewhere (anywhere) to learn about the digital future of hotels?
So while its commendable that the hospitality education industry is finally focussing on Digital Transformation (and rightly so!), I think its time we digitally transformed hospitality education first!
Thorsten Edu 