Which Is Better, A Hospitality Degree or Hotel Management Degree?

If you’re look­ing to get into the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, tourism and trav­el indus­try, there are two main types of degrees that can jump­start your career. Either you’ll want a hos­pi­tal­i­ty degree or a hotel man­age­ment degree. Decid­ing which is bet­ter for you is an indi­vid­ual jour­ney, but here we’ll try to guide the process by going over some key dif­fer­ences between the degrees and explor­ing some top online hos­pi­tal­i­ty and hotel man­age­ment degree options.

When decid­ing between a hos­pi­tal­i­ty degree or a hotel man­age­ment degree, ask yourself:

• Where do you want to be working?
• How high do you want to be in your organization?
• What hours do you want to work?
• How much do you want to earn?
• What do you want your respon­si­bil­i­ties to be?

The next thing to ask your­self is, “what hos­pi­tal­i­ty or hotel man­age­ment degree pro­gram is right for me?” To that end, we’ve ranked the 30 Best Online Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Man­age­ment Pro­grams based on cost per cred­it hour, aver­age ear­ly salary after grad­u­a­tion, stu­dent to fac­ul­ty ratio, and grad­u­a­tion rates. All the data was pulled from the Nation­al Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics, payscale.com, and the school web­sites. On that rank­ing, you’ll find a wide vari­ety of hos­pi­tal­i­ty and hotel man­age­ment pro­grams, both in their con­tent and their deliv­ery format.

Decid­ing between a hos­pi­tal­i­ty degree or a hotel man­age­ment degree is also about your goals, and your abil­i­ty to meet the respon­si­bil­i­ties in jobs the degrees would qual­i­fy you for. Hotel Man­age­ment degrees will pre­pare you to run the oper­a­tions of a hotel, resort, or oth­er lodg­ing busi­ness. You’ll be con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing the dif­fer­ent areas with­in the hotel, set­ting up and run­ning meet­ings with your employ­ees, review­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing the hotel’s per­for­mance data and oth­er key sta­tis­tics (think occu­pan­cy num­bers, rev­enues, etc.), respond­ing to calls and emails, trou­bleshoot­ing prob­lems with­in the hotel, and much more.

A hos­pi­tal­i­ty degree is a lit­tle more open-end­ed. In it, you’ll gain a well-round­ed edu­ca­tion that covers:

• Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Law
• Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Leadership
• Inter­na­tion­al Experience
• Human Resources for the Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Industry
• Finance in Hospitality
• Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Operations
• Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Marketing
• Account­ing in Hospitality
• Field Expe­ri­ence
• Food and Bev­er­age Management
• Among many oth­er topics

You might work direct­ly with clients or cus­tomers to ensure the qual­i­ty of their expe­ri­ence. You might work in oper­a­tions, mak­ing sure a hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness is func­tion­ing smooth­ly with your labor and exper­tise. What­ev­er you end up doing with­in hos­pi­tal­i­ty, hos­pi­tal­i­ty degrees exist to make sure you’ll be able to excel at it.

Make sure to check out our 30 Best Online Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Man­age­ment Pro­grams rank­ing to find the best pro­gram for you. You’ll find great infor­ma­tion on spe­cial fea­tures, cost of atten­dance, sched­ul­ing and much more that will help you eas­i­ly whit­tle down the hos­pi­tal­i­ty and hotel man­age­ment degree options based on your goals, desires and constrictions.

Relat­ed:

25 Best Bach­e­lor’s in Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Management

15 Best Online Bach­e­lor’s in Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Management

10 Fastest Online Bach­e­lor’s in Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Management

10 Most Afford­able Bach­e­lor’s in Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Management