Copyright © IJIFR 2014 Author’s Subject Area: Hotel Management Available Online at: - http://www.ijifr.com/searchjournal.aspx www.ijifr.com ijifr.journal@gmail.com ISSN (Online): 2347-1697 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATIVE & FUTURISTIC RESEARCH An Enlightening Online Open Access, Refereed & Indexed Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Volume -1 Issue -9, May 2014 101 Changing perception of students towards Hotel Management Course while pursuing the course Abstract Hotel Management Institutes have seen a tremendous growth in the recent years. More and more students are inclining to join / pursue this course at from the institutes at national level or at different universities or private institutes. The popularity of this course amongst the aspirants is because of many career opportunity factors such as, job opportunities, different avenues, popularity of various television programme based on cooking skills, parents of students already into hotel business, eligibility criteria, entrepreneurship plans, overseas job opportunities, passion & interest etc. The study aims at finding out about if the purpose of pursuing this course in the first year of education remains the same throughout the course period or are there any influencing factors which may lead to changing their perception about the programmes in due course. The primary data for this study has been collected through questionnaire from five prominent hotel management institutes affiliated to University of Pune and the same has been presented in graphical form for clear understanding while the secondary data has been collected through literature review of various research papers, articles and books. Key Words: Hotel Management, Career Opportunities, Influencing Factors, Programmes Perception 1 Introduction Indian hospitality industry is growing leaps and bounds. This is definitely because of the increasing demand of hospitality in domestic and global market. According to Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India, India currently has over 200,000 hotel rooms spread across hotel categories and guest-houses and is still facing a shortfall of over 100,000 rooms. Hospitality is a booming industry in India. Tourism and hospitality are the third largest net earners of foreign exchange in India and they are expected to be number very soon. The ninth five year plan has predicted a shortage of 30,000 trained professionals every year. The stakeholder’s realization is that the country is in need of professionals who can provide an excellent standard of products and services in hospitality. Thus, the growth opportunity for this sector is Sunder Srinivasan 1 , Anuradha Karmarkar 2 1 Asst. Professor, AISSMS’s College of HMCT, Pune – 05 2 Asst. Professor, AISSMS’s College of HMCT, Pune – 05 PAPER ID: IJIFR / V1 / E9 / 018