Hospitourism League – An Introduction and need of nonformal hospitality education in India

Indian culture prescribes an age-old philosophy of “Atithi Devo Bhava”, which portrays a dynamic of host-guest relationship. This ancient maxim means that a guest is a manifestation of God, but the Indian global Tourism ranking at 40th position contradicts this philosophy. There are many challenges before the hospitality and tourism sector in India and one of the major challenges are to bridge the gap of demand-supply of the skilled and unskilled workforce. According to a market Pulse Report published by Ministry of Tourism, currently, there are more than 1,20,000 hotel rooms in India, both in the organized and unorganized sectors. Industry will require an additional one million professionals by the year 2023. Hospitality is much more than just cooking, cleaning, and entertaining. There is a need to focus at this concern from psychosocial point of view and to find a constructive & lasting solution. Lack of nonformal hospitality education at school level and a poor perceived image of hospitality and tourism sector is also disturbing and adding to the challenge of attracting skilled manpower who can serve the industry efficiently. This paper introduces a unique concept of Hospitourism, which works at the root level of this issue and supplements the objectives of Skill India Mission.