I think the Hospitality Management program
at JMU is very unique, because you get to
do a lot of practical work experience in addition
to your classes. And also the professors here
are amazing. They’re really helpful and
they’re really friendly. Whenever you need
help, they are always there for you. We have
to take a lot of hotel operations classes,
restaurant management, and also a lot of culinary
classes, which I think is very interesting
and different here at JMU. As a requirement
to graduate, you also have to take a culinary
class, which is half a semester long. That
is required for every hospitality major student.
Mostly, the classes in hospitality take place
in Godwin Hall and recently there’s a new
building called the Madison Hotel, which is
a new hotel here in Harrisonburg. I think
the hotel has new facilities for students,
so a lot of the classes are going to be moved
from Godwin Hall to the new hotel, so students
can actually experience what it’s like to
do practical experience. And I think the hotel
will also provide new opportunities for students
to maybe find an internship, or a job in the
future after they graduate. So, definitely
a lot of new opportunities with Madison Hotel.
There are a lot of projects that we have to
do along with our classes. For example, for
our Hotel Operations class, we had to do research
about competitive sets of hotels around Harrisonburg
and also globally. We have to know the different
brands of hotels and also analyze their revenue,
what their budget is, how competitive are
they, and also analyze different reports from
different hotels. So that was definitely part of our Hospitality Management program, is to prepare our students to become
maybe future revenue managers and also being
able to analyze how hotels differ from one
another.
As a Hospitality Management major, there are
a lot of opportunities and a lot of directions
you can go in. There can be a hotel direction,
which is working in a hotel, or there’s
the event industry. Some students are really
interested to work in events management, that’s
one route they can take. And there are a lot
of students who are interested in restaurant
management. And there’s also the cruise line industry. Those are basically the main fields in the
hospitality industry.
