Sandals to offer university-level hospitality courses to its employees
Sandals Resorts International will soon offer its employees university-level courses in hospitality and hotel management through an accredited distance learning school, said company CEO Adam Stewart.
The Sandals group has invested more than $1 million in the “corporate university” which is set to launch in January 2012.
The university is expected to train 4,000 employees within its first year of operation, said Stewart during an interview yesterday.
The school will partner with colleges in the United States, Canada and Europe, which will create curriculum and course programs based on content from their schools of hospitality and hotel management.
Stewart said his company created the university to invest in its human capital, an investment that is crucial to the continued growth of the 30-year-old company.
“At the end of the day, what we realized was that building the concrete is something that we think we know how to do, probably better than anybody. So that’s never the issue; the issue for any organization to grow is being able to take your people along for the ride with you and develop and grow,” Stewart said.
“We’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching within our group. Now that we’re up to 22 hotels Caribbean-wide, being at a crossroads for a Caribbean company, 30 years is a long run, and you really have to ask yourself what’s next. We own our hotels, which is different; a lot of people manage other people’s hotels. We own our concrete and so we’re fully invested. But if we really want to expand big time over the next 15, 20 years, we’ve got to make sure that the people are with us.”
Stewart said although the Sandals group offers in-house training for staff who come on board with “the right attitude” but no skills, the company felt as though it needed to expand its educational offering. Students will be able to train in positions and areas they would otherwise never have been exposed to, and work on properties in Europe, North America and the Caribbean.
“It’s a proper charted course, a road map that can say ‘this is the where you are and if you want to be the general manager of a Sandals hotel, these are the things that you have to achieve, and this is what it’s going to cost and our contribution towards you’.”
Course credits will be transferrable to other schools, Stewart said.
The university will cost $5 million a year to operate. The company also plans to purchase property in Jamaica where a permanent campus will be housed.
Sandals will hand out 30 scholarships to high-achieving employees to attend the university when it launches next month.
Courtesy of The Nassau Guardian
Taneka Thompson
Guardian Senior Reporter
taneka@nasguard.com
