ummer vacation. The images are classics: The kids are packed in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon; beach chairs and bicycles are lashed to the roof. The old man’s embarrassing everybody with his Hawaiian shirt, white socks and sandals, and Mom’s in a floppy sunhat clutching a Danielle Steele novel. By the end of the week, the family’s back home with sunburned shoulders, seashell souvenirs, and nothing but sand left in the old man’s empty wallet.

When most people think of tourism, that’s one of the predominant images. But these days, tourism encompasses a whole lot more. In fact, tourism and other hospitality-related businesses rank among Georgia’s largest industries and one of the few areas of the economy that has been growing recently.

According to the state Department of Labor, nearly 4,000 jobs were added last year in the tourism and hospitality sector. And to Janis Cannon, deputy commissioner for tourism at Georgia’s Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism, that means that this part of the economy is where Georgians will find increasing opportunities.

“That’s the beauty of the hospitality industry,” Cannon says. “There are so many opportunities, such as management, where it’s really a business-type degree or skill set. Because if you manage a hotel, for instance, it’s almost like being a small city manager: Your rooms are like residences, your restaurants and gift shops are like retail spaces, your security force is like a police department, your guests are your residents. So you have to have an overall business acumen and understanding of everything from finance to sales and marketing.”

Today’s tourist demands more than just a visit to the gator farm and a sack of boiled peanuts. Conventioneers want convenience and high-end amenities. “Heritage tourism” caters to history buffs who want detailed itineraries and nostalgic sites taking them back into the past. “Eco-tourism” offers trips and attractions where nature is the star, a low-impact trip into the wilderness where the visitor takes nothing but photographs and leaves nothing but footprints. And an emerging trend is “agri-tourism,” where an increasingly urban population finds entertainment and education combined in trips to working farms and dairies.

Agri-tourism is “another special interest tourism in Georgia,” adds Cannon. “It’s an opportunity we need to embrace in addition to nature and heritage tourism.” And when people travel, they need hotels to sleep in, restaurants to eat in, shops to meander through, and well-informed travel agents and tour guides to show them the way. With more and more visitors wanting to “see America first,” there’s little wonder why this part of the economy is growing.

Responding to increased demand for skilled workers in this industry, the DTAE has developed new programs that are proving extremely popular at the technical colleges. While GDITT works to promote tourism and attract visitors to the state, Georgia’s technical colleges are training the people who will welcome them.

UPDATING THE CURRICULUM
A few years ago, Kathy Pearson was just another dissatisfied worker. But she had always wanted to be involved in the travel business.

“I started with a couple courses at Gwinnett Tech,” Pearson says, “and ended up going from the certificate to the diploma program.”

She attributes her success to the breadth of training at Gwinnett Technical College in travel operations, marketing and travel law, as well as in-depth experience with a major airline computer ticketing program.

Since graduating two years ago, Pearson says, her success has been wonderfully rapid. “I started with a home-based agency, then an opportunity arose to do an internship here at this agency, which I now own!” she laughs, referring to Vision Travel in Loganville. “In fact, I’m about to move to another location that will be even better for business.”

The fact that the right program for Pearson was available at the right time at Gwinnett Tech illustrates the technical colleges’ flexibility and responsiveness to changing times.

“Our Hotel, Restaurant and Travel (HRT) program started in 1984,” says Gwinnett Tech President Sharon Rigsby. “That was about the time that the hospitality industry in Gwinnett County began to change due to the opening of Gwinnett Place Mall,” located five minutes from campus.

In 1982, Gwinnett County was home to just four motels. Today there are more than 100. In 1987, Gwinnett Tech had 25 students enrolled in the program. Today it has about 150.

“After more industry located in Gwinnett County, more restaurants came to life,” she says. “In 1987, we added the restaurant piece to the program; before that, it centered on the hotel business. We added a number of courses to complement our new focus. An Employee Leadership Training program was developed for all three parts of the program in response to demand by industry. Local business leaders in the hospitality industry told us this was essential to our program.”

In addition, the program’s advisory committee, consisting of about 30 local and regional business leaders in the hospitality industry, felt the school needed to add an engineering aspect so that students would learn how to maintain facilities.

“So we did,” Rigsby says. “We know this industry holds a lot of opportunity for our students, and business and industry depend on us to deliver well-qualified workers.”

Gwinnett Tech’s practice of adapting their program to local needs is typical of the approach being taken by Georgia’s technical colleges in developing their own HRT programs. Recent updates in the basic statewide HRT curriculum have responded to changes in the tourism and hospitality industry and have given the local colleges a foundation to build upon.

“When we feel it’s time to update a program, we put together a committee of employers from around the state,” says Larry Roberson, the DTAE’s coordinator for HRT and Culinary Arts programs, explaining the process recently undertaken. “We present our current curriculum, and say, ‘Are there competencies that need to be removed, or are not here, or that have emerged or are on the horizon that need to be included? Once we’ve done that, we meet with hospitality facilities and determine which courses they would like to see added.”

The process resulted in a basic curriculum that ensures that all the colleges adhere to a shared set of standards.

“The colleges can teach over and above those standards,” Roberson says. “We’ll look at geographical makeup of the state, and put together programs that can work for everybody. Local colleges can use electives to allow them to plug in courses that are designed to target the needs of their communities.”

TAILORED TO LOCAL NEEDS
A number of technical colleges around the state have been taking advantage of this flexible approach. Atlanta Tech and Gwinnett Tech are packing classes aimed at meeting the needs of the metro area’s booming hotel, entertainment and convention trade; Columbus Tech is launching its first HRT program; Augusta Tech is beefing up its Culinary Arts program; and Albany Tech is crafting its own new program in response to the development of a sprawling new hotel and convention center.

At the upper end of the state, North Georgia Technical College is forging ahead in its own direction, concentrating on the needs of the resort and specialty hotel businesses that abound in the wooded glens of north Georgia.

“The hospitality industry has always been a vital and growing segment of the economy in northeast Georgia,” says Dr. Ruth Nichols, president of North Georgia Tech. “The Culinary Arts and Hotel and Motel Management programs were designed to address the employee needs of this industry. Feasibility studies indicated that employment opportunities in this field were strong enough to support the job placement needs of the program.”

Al Tholen, HRT Management and Professional Chef instructor at the college’s Blairsville campus, notes that a changing demographic and steady infusion of newcomers to his hilly region has spurred attention on the area’s needs.

“Our coursework focus is to teach skills that will get people employed in hotels, restaurants, resorts, state parks, lodges, nature camps and other businesses that sell the beauty and relaxation of this area,” he says.

Like other colleges with HRT courses, his offers the basics in hotel, restaurant and food service management, and travel geography courses address the types of destinations various travelers might desire. But the program is customized according to the needs of that geography.

“Our area has a good number of resorts, so we focus on those,” he says. “We also concentrate on smaller properties, because in our area there are probably 50 percent more 50- to 100-room hotels than 200- to 300-room hotels you see in larger metropolitan areas. We try to focus on some of the challenges in those operations.”

Tholen notes that the geographical distinction of northeast Georgia influenced the shaping of their Culinary Arts program, as well. “When we first opened this campus four years ago,” he recalls, “our students and advisers discovered that the state curriculum was a little too heavy in the commercial-type cookery found in hospitals and schools. That approach is very important, but we had different needs in this area.

“We decided to request DTAE approval to teach coursework that better supported the small restaurants, resorts and hotels here in northeast Georgia. We poured more emphasis into baking, cold-food preparation, and the type of cookery found in kitchens in our area. We got approval, and I’m proud to tell you that, after about a year of running it here, it’s been quite successful.”

At Gwinnett Tech, the convention/hotel emphasis takes precedence. “The great thing about tourism is that it’s a clean industry — no smokestacks, nothing like that — and it gets people from outside Georgia to spend their money here. We like that,” says Dr. Mark Newton, HRT director.

“One area very popular here is the convention and meeting planning class,” he notes. “That’s a huge industry, and we’re very involved in teaching the class, getting together with all the various meeting organizations. My students worked with the Meetings Industry Council of Georgia to develop our own website, which we manage, and is a tremendous resource.”

Newton says keeping students aware of the breadth of opportunity is essential. “Just about every quarter, we rent a tour bus and go around the Atlanta area so people can see not just Buckhead and Peachtree Street, but also Virginia-Highland, downtown, cultural areas [such as the King Historical District], and the different careers out there.”

CONSISTENT, PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
As tourism and hospitality increase in importance in other areas of the state, other technical colleges are implementing their own programs in response to local needs. Albany Technical College, for example, is starting a program because of new urban development. “What’s happening here is that we have a hotel and convention center going up downtown,” says HRT department head Martha Fullmore. “So with our program — which is rather small right now — we’re beginning hotel and restaurant classes.”

Fullmore anticipates growth in the future, but for now, she says, “We’re just getting off the ground.”

In Savannah, a unique partnership with the private sector is allowing Savannah Tech to develop a program to help support the tourism industry in one of Georgia’s premier destination cities. Recently, the Tourist Leadership Council provided $70,000 to help start up the hospitality management program at Savannah Tech. In conjunction with the Savannah Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce, the council also helped with the recruitment process and curriculum development.

“One of the things we’re experiencing, and that Atlanta is experiencing, is that the level of traditional summer tourists has flattened,” says Dr. C.B. Rathburn, president of Savannah Technical College. “Our biggest business now — and the heart and soul of Atlanta’s — is the business traveler, the conventioneer. You want that visitor to come to your environment and have a consistent, professional level of service, all the way from the clerk at the gift shop to the people in leadership and management capacities.”

Savannah Tech has done just that by creating a series of specialized technical certificates of credit. This approach will allow individuals to focus in one of three areas: convention sales and marketing, which is currently a hot field; hotel and restaurant management; or culinary arts.

Says Rathburn, “This is how our system trains our graduates to bring the best level of skill and customer service demanded by the tourism and hospitality industry in popular destinations.”

Columbus Technical College is also starting a new program. “When I came here in October,” says Nancy Coleman, VP of economic development, “there had been nothing to prepare people for the increase in the number of restaurants and hotels in the area.”

So Coleman formed a partnership with Goodwill Industries to prepare local students to enter the field. “They’re doing a lot of the front-end recruitment of students, and we’re assessing their skills and offering the actual instruction. It’s an eight-week certificate program. We should have graduates by the end of July,” she says.

“The momentum is rolling.”

Special thanks to GDITT for images
used in postcard composites and the
Sapelo Island image

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