Tourism and hospitality sectors throughout the world have significantly slowed since the emergence of Covid-19. After many countries fought the pandemic spread with vaccines and measures, the global situation came under control while immunised people were protected from severe symptoms. Even now, Covid-19 keeps evolving new variants but they tend to cause less severe symptoms. People around the world are therefore gradually getting used to their new normal lives.
Likewise in Thailand where disease control measures are being loosened one after another, including Thailand Pass cancellation and declaration of 77 provinces lowering controls in surveillance areas (green code), allowing businesses to operate normally since 1 July 2022.
Most recently, the National Communicable Disease Committee considered shifting the Covid-19 status from dangerous communicable disease to precautious communicable disease.
These policies allow tourism and hospitality sectors to recover little by little. ttb analytics, an economic analysis centre, forecasts that the number of domestic travellers in Thailand will increase 160% compared to the same period of 2021. This will expand the revenue from tourism in Thailand by over 200%. A study indicates that more than 2 million international travellers visited Thailand in the first half of 2022, generating 1.14 hundred billion baht cash flow.
Dusit Thani College, as an educational institute that provides bachelor and master programs specialised in hospitality businesses under the umbrella of Dusit International, has prepared its organisational development for the return of growth in tourism and hospitality sectors and remains determined to develop this knowledge.
To this end, the college has flagged four missions that aim to prepare students and college members, namely, Sustainability, Integration, Digitalisation, and Internationalisation.
“According to several surveys, Thailand remains one of the most popular destinations for tourists around the world,” observes Miss Frouke Gerbens, Rector of Dusit Thani College. “The educational sector therefore plays an important role in creating skilful workers equipped with the latest knowledge and international standards to mobilise Thailand’s tourism and hospitality industry towards the future.”
“With our specialty, Dusit Thani College is dedicated to excellence as a centre of tourism, hotel and hospitality education in ASEAN.”
It does this by adhering to its four missions:
Sustainability – sustainable improvement focused on both optimising the usage of resources and developing human resources;
Integration – a collaboration among curricula and internal departments as well as external organisational partnership;
Digitalisation – adaptation of technology in learning and working, and;
Internationalisation – development of bilingual and international curricula that cultivate international mindsets in students with an aim to be a leader at ASEAN level.
The four missions reinforcing the quality of education are part of overall organisational development in students and staff. Dusit Thani College sees that developing readiness of tourism and hospitality sectors to reopen for domestic and inbound travellers needs sustainable holistic enhancement from upstream to downstream. It is necessary to increase the quality of human capital at the foundations through education. The college aims to deepen and broaden the skills of instructors and staff to equip students with theoretical and practical expertise that eventually leads to the development of tourism and hospitality sectors at national and international levels.
