Just 16 months after assuming office as president and chief operating officer of the Orlando (USA)-based American Hotel and Lodging Educational Institute (AH&LEI), Robert Steele III visited India to assess the prospects and development needs of this country’s booming hospitality industry. “Currently, India has 100,000 international standard hotel rooms. This number is expected to double within the next two years,” says Steele.

Established in 1953, the AH&LEI is a not-for-profit, member-benefit subsidiary of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, which celebrates its centennial anniversary this year. AH&LEI provides hospitality education syllabuses and curriculums, materials, training and professional certification to hotel management institutes, and hotels themselves for in-service training.

During his first week-long visit to India where he attended the Hotels Investment Conference, South Asia convened in Delhi between April 7-8, Steele also met with educators, the media and top brass of fast-track hotel chains such as Lemon Tree and the Park Group to explore collaboration prospects.

AH&LEI is represented in India by an eponymous India branch office (estb.1994) and supervised by vice president K.V. Simon, an alumnus of the Institute of Hotel Management, Mumbai (1970). After garnering industry experience, Simon completed the business administration and hotel/restaurant management programme of Northwood University, Midland, Michigan, in 1976. The AH&LEI India branch office provides teacher training, grade exam and certification study programme packages and distance learning courses to over 70 of the country’s estimated 250 hotel management institutes and assists US-bound students to obtain admission and scholarships. In 2008, AH&LEI signed up with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to introduce a BA degree programme in hotel administration taught in the hybrid mode at 30 IGNOU learning centres countrywide.

A biology sciences graduate of Tennessee State University, in the true American tradition, Steele began his career in the bottom rung of the hospitality industry working as a waiter to pay his tuition fees. In 1975 he was signed up by the globe-girdling hospitality transnational, Hyatt Hotels Corp, where he served for 30 years before retiring as a senior general manager prior to accepting AH&LEI’s offer in 2008.

In his new avatar, Steele has drawn up ambitious plans for AH&LEI’s renewed engagement with India’s fast-growing hospitality industry. “Thanks to the excellent work of our India branch, over the past 16 years we have established a good reputation in the academic wing of India’s hospitality industry, and will expand our operations to further engage with it,” says Steele.

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Nisha Khiani (Mumbai)

Also read: Hospitality: Scope, Challenges, and Opportunities