HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Tourism continues to be the number one industry in Florida.
“It’s so important. It’s the livelihood of this state,” said Cihan Cobanoglu, Dean of the USF School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
Experts believe the industry is growing as more people keep traveling here and corporations invest in Florida’s future.
“All you have to do is look around. And new restaurants and attractions and the arts and sports and the venues,” said Santiago Corrada, President and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay.
Tampa Bay especially is seeing record-breaking tourism numbers.
“March by far was the best tourism month in Hillsborough in its history,’ said Corrada.
Reports show the area saw almost $130 million in hotel revenue and nearly $8 million in tourism revenue collections.
Year to date, Tampa Bay is number one in its competition with an 81% occupancy rate.
“I don’t see any slowing up for us,” said Corrada.
This is one of the many reasons why USF’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management is now experiencing significant growth since expanding from the Sarasota-Manatee campus to the Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses this past fall.
“We are receiving every single semester about 200% increase in our enrollment,” said Cobanoglu.
All of the Tampa courses are full, and this coming fall, USF is going to start three new programs to try to keep up with the demand.
Those new programs include:
- a certificate program for event management
- a certificate program for beverage management
- a hospitality minor
“So a lot of students, not just from the hospitality major, but other majors are also taking the hospitality courses,” said Cobanoglu.
USF partnered with companies that are giving students real-life hospitality and tourism experience.
“It’s a great industry with great jobs, with lots of benefits. Because of COVID, we’ve learned flexibility and I think the more students we can get in the pipeline, the more young people and young professionals we can get excited about going into this industry, is a benefit to all of us,” Corrada.
Experts said giving students these real-life experiences so they’re prepared for the workforce is crucial because although hotels and other businesses continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still lingering setbacks, including significant staffing shortages.
In a recent report from The American Hotel & Lodging Association, staffing is expected to remain a significant challenge for U.S. hotels in 2023, with hotels projected to employ 2.09 million people in 2023, down from 2.35 million in 2019.
“The business is going up, labor already went down and they are having a hard time to regain that labor, so that’s where USF comes into the picture,” said Cobanoglu.
“We need individuals to work in these sectors of the hospitality industry and so what better way than to have a great institution like the University of South Florida preparing young people,” said Corrada.
Experts said USF is creating a much-needed talent pipeline from the school to the industry to fill open positions.
“We knew the demand was there. We knew the demand for workers in the industry was there. We were seeing the bottled-up demand and we needed to prepare the young professionals to enter the industry,” said Corrada.
