Arnie Weissmann
Last Saturday, Internova CEO J.D. O'Hara stood before a group of high school students at his company headquarters and extolled the virtues of a career in travel, noting that "some advisors working in this building make more than a million dollars a year."
Three days later, Telesa Via sat in a classroom at Delaware State University (DSU) and told a group of students how she rose from head of sales for one Hyatt property to become head of sales for the entire IHG Hotels & Resorts luxury and lifestyle portfolio in the Americas.
Both presentations were made to minority students and were not only examples of ongoing efforts to increase diversity in the travel industry but to, generally speaking, interest young people in a career in travel.
For those of us already working in the travel industry, it seems almost a mystery that everybody in the world wouldn't want a career in travel. It may be condescending on my part to say this, but I suspect that if there were a publication called Tube Socks Weekly, the editor would not be as excited to visit a new manufacturing plant as I am when I head to the Caribbean to check out a new resort.
The groups that organized the two gatherings had different motivations and approaches, each geared to the educational stage of the students they were addressing.
The Internova get-together emerged from a relationship between the agency group and an organization called I Am Cultured, which aims, broadly, to equip under-resourced high school students with skills to succeed in life. A cornerstone of its effort is taking kids abroad each summer to experience different cultures and gain global perspectives.
The Internova event focused partly on practical skills: a photographer took headshots of students; Internova's head of human relations, Molly Johnson, conducted a resume-writing workshop; and an executive from LinkedIn gave a tutorial on making the most of that platform.
I was asked to share something about the power of networking during a session on that topic, and I thought the event itself was a perfect example: Reggie Hudson, a friend and former co-worker, introduced me to I Am Cultured founder Karmia Berry. I introduced her to O'Hara. Everyone in the room, I said, was there as a result of networking.
Inspiration was provided by a number of panels featuring successful Black executives in various industries, with travel well represented among them. Speakers included Protravel International director of account operations Curtis Parris, Travel Hub 365 CEO Stephen Scott, Internova director of partner analytics Paul Coverdale, Delta manager of global sales Lizbeth Barrera and Globus senior account manager Michael Lawson.
A job fair had representatives from sponsors, among them Abercrombie & Kent, ALG Vacations, AmaWaterways, CIE Tours, Crystal, Delta, Disney, Hyatt, Insight Vacations, MSC Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Omni Hotels & Resorts, Royal Caribbean, Universal and Virgin Voyages.
The event at DSU, a historically Black school, had a different approach and purpose. Its hospitality school has only 35 enrollees; it staged a campus "hospitality takeover," with speakers, a job fair, food and entertainment. The goal was not only to attract undeclared students to consider choosing a hospitality major but to have students consider minoring in the discipline.
Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, Four Seasons and Wyndham participated in the job fair.
A travel advisor track, designed by Sanya Weston, CEO of Your Premier Travel Group, will be offered by the university for the first time in the fall. She and Alvin Adriano, director of industry affairs for ASTA; Samantha Hammond, owner of Jus Adventures Travel Services; and Jermaine Humphrey, director of sales and business development for Marival Resorts, are on DSU's travel and hospitality advisory board.
That event was the first of several planned for historically Black colleges and universities with hospitality or travel management programs. The series is being organized by the Alliance for Hospitality Equity & Diversity. Its executive director, Brian Barker, a clinical professor at New York University's Tisch Center of Hospitality, also addressed students. Representatives of Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, the AHLA Foundation and the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau are on the alliance's board.
I was also on the in-classroom panel with IHG's Via. Interestingly, it was not a session in the hospitality department but was a communications class; Via and panelist Nikki Massey, senior vice president of human resources for Hyatt, had both majored in communications.
That raised some eyebrows -- and interest -- from students in the class. When the panel ended, panelists were approached by students. I spoke to a young woman named Anias, a journalism major who already has her eye on travel writing.
All things considered, it appeared the events succeeded in raising the interest in a travel industry career. Should I have been editor of Tube Socks Weekly, or perhaps even a scientific journal, I doubt Anias' enthusiasm would have been quite as apparent.