How dare you?

In light of the speculation of her nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, I’m compelled to revisit Greta Thunberg’s now famous speech from 2019. Last September, the 17 year old global activist addressed world leaders in a speech that brought to light their inaction against the impending climate catastrophe. This passionate, strong headed young woman stood before the most powerful people in the planet and asked them a simple question:

How dare you?

Out of the years and years since ‘climate change’ has been raised as a crisis, how many speeches or talks over the last decade do we remember? Save for, perhaps, Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’, how many addresses or speeches from world leaders have been memorable enough for us to actively talk about or share? Or did they get drowned out by other carefully choreographed performances that were careful not to step on any toes? Despite the urgency of the situation, influential people and thought leaders sugarcoated their words and beat around the bush because they were more worried about disturbing the status quo or angering their boss rather than directly address the rapidly rising temperature or pollution that threatens to wipe us all out anyway. We’re used to hearing the same mundane, rehashed formula over and over again – and so we don’t even pay any attention to it.

This speech however – with its passion, its anger – it shakes you up. It makes you uncomfortable. It makes you face the facts – however terrifying they may be. There’s no dancing around the topic with a hopeful sign off and sweeping the problem under the rug until the next time something bad happens and we need it address it again.

Which is where I bring this full circle.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re in my circle and we’re peers in the world of hospitality. Travel, tourism, aviation, education. This means you too have at dozens of hospitality centric events, conferences and panel discussions. Listened to hundreds of speeches about various issues or problems in our industry. We’ve all sat there, with our brains on autopilot, ready to let the speeches go in one ear and out the other. Because we’ve heard it all before. Talk about issue. Complain about issue. Discuss consequences of issue. Propose ways of fixing issue. End speech forget the issue until the next event.

How dare we.

How many years is it now that we’re all preaching about the lack of talent our industry is facing? How hotels and airlines can expand because we don’t have the manpower? How we have to spend money and resources retraining the graduates that do join our industries because they’re not up to the mark? That we can’t get enough students to enroll because they simply don’t know what hospitality is? It’s a cycle that’s repeating itself year in and year out – but aside from just talking about it, what are we actually doing to break it?

What are we doing to change things? What are we actively doing to do something about these problems that we’re all aware of and preach about?

Are we changing perceptions of hospitality education? How are we changing mindsets and creating awareness out there for young people in their 11th and 12th standard for the opportunities our industry offers? What are we doing to open up our world to these ambitious young people and tell them they have an exciting future with us?

Hospitality education in our country is surrounded by misconceptions and outdated ideas that we’re not doing nearly enough to change.

We’re not going into K12 schools. We’re not bringing young kids to us either. There’s so much potential and room to promote a stronger bridge between institute and industry. Instead, when it’s time for college admissions, we’ve got so many students who choose hospitality because ‘oh I didn’t think of anything else’, or, even better ‘I didn’t get into anywhere else’. Of course this isn’t the case for everyone – we still have students who truly aspire for hospitality, but that’s because they’ve been exposed to the industry through mum, dad or a relative. But those numbers are miniscule compared to the majority of students who see hospitality as some sort of last resort – and that’s a huge problem because it’s simply not true. The professional possibilities in hospitality are huge for today’s generation – so why are we letting these myths still exist? How dare we complain about low college enrolment when we’ve not visited schools, inspired, excited young kids about what they can become under your wing. Instead, we sit here, away from everyone else, waiting for them to find out about our secretive community themselves and we’re surprised when barely a handful show up.

What do we do when these students take their first steps into our industry? Our industry that is so hungry for talent and growth. We don’t treat them like fresh talent – we treat them like fresh meat. We take these students that already felt like they’ve joined a secondary industry and we treat them like casual labor. We don’t teach them enough or properly. We don’t give them a chance to showcase their skills or use new ones. Studies have analysed students following their work experience and concluded that students become less interested in joining hospitality as a first choice following their internships. Negative experiences have been shown to have a drastic impact on students’ perceptions of the hospitality industry – while positive ones have only gone on to strengthen the enthusiasm and optimism of pursuing a career in the sector. High levels of training satisfaction amongst interns then led to confidence in future career ambitions. Happy interns result in optimistic, happy graduates ready to pursue their ambitions in the industry.

I know that none of this is news to any of you – it’s a fact we’re all aware of. So why aren’t we all working together with more institutes to make curated internships a universal concept? So when these same mistreated interns join you years later with little practical experience and don’t know how to handle the simplest of things – how dare we complain that colleges aren’t doing enough to prepare them?

I am aware I can seem to be doing the same thing that I’m speaking against – highlighting problems and talking about the solutions. But I’m actively doing the best I can to change all of this. As COO of the Indian School of Hospitality, I’m making sure we’re doing what we can to bring the industry to our institute. Our admissions team is constantly on tour across schools across the country, enlightening children on hospitality, culinary arts and the exciting careers they can have. We’re offering various scholarships to students of all walks of life, making sure financial vulnerability doesn’t mean an end to education.

With ISH, we’re opening up our community to the outside world. We’re showing the lives of our students. We’re getting industry leaders to talk about their own experience in hospitality. We’re doing what we can to humanize our world – make it more accessible, friendly and understandable.

We know the flaws that exist in the current educational landscape – and we’re doing everything we can do not go down the same route. We’re working together with you to curate internships and give our students a structured learning experience that is only going to fuel their dreams – and not extinguish them.

I know the education we are offering at ISH is premium – and, like all premium products, comes with a price. But that doesn’t mean its only available for people who can afford that price tag. What I care about – what we care about – at ISH – is finding talent, training talent, and providing exceptional talent to fill this talent gap that we have all been discussing for so long. Which is why we’ve set up a scholarship fund – flourish. Through this fund, we’ve given full ride scholarships to some of the most incredible students I’ve met in my life.

For the scope of talent we have waiting, undiscovered, underprivileged in our country – we need to work a lot harder to make significant change. We complain about the lack of students joining colleges, the lack of graduates coming to work for us - but what are we doing to increase those numbers? What schools have we visited? What awareness campaigns have we done? What funds have we created or contributed to? How many students have we sponsored? What have you, personally, done to make the difference you’re asking to see?

Next time, before you take the stage at whatever event it will be, before you put that microphone to your mouth, stop and think. Before preaching about this broken cycle – stop and think – what have you done to put an end to it? What have you done to inspire, encourage and empower the youth and talent of our country to join us? Until then, for anyone who decides to simply complain and crib about the issues we are all too familiar with without doing the slightest to change it – I simply say - how dare you.

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