Asia Deserves Greater Recognition In Hospitality And Culinary Education

By Mr. Ruban Paul, Instructor, International Program, Bangkok University

When families in India think about hospitality and culinary education, the instinct is almost always to look West. Swiss hotel schools, French culinary academies, European institutions with century-old reputations. The assumption is that the finest training in food, service, and hospitality management belongs to the continent that, for much of the last century, defined global luxury.

It is time to examine that assumption honestly.

The hospitality and culinary industries as they exist today, and as they will exist over the next two decades, are not centred in Europe. They are centred in Asia. The fastest-growing hotel markets, the highest volumes of international tourism, and the most ambitious food and beverage expansions by global luxury brands are all happening across this region. Marriott International, Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Accor and Novotel are not merely operating in Asia. They are investing in Asia, hiring in Asia, and building the future of their brands here. For a student who wants a career in this industry, the question of where to train is not merely academic. It is strategic.

This is the argument at the heart of how Bangkok University approaches its Bachelor of Culinary Arts and Design and Bachelor of International Tourism and Hospitality Management programmes. The institution was founded in 1962, Bangkok University places emphasis on practical learning and industry engagement. That philosophy has not changed. What has changed is how clearly Asia’s centrality to the global hospitality industry reinforces it.

Bangkok is not incidental to this argument. It is essential to it. The city sits at the intersection of Southeast Asia’s most important tourism, food, and business corridors. It is a city where international hotel brands maintain significant regional operations, where culinary traditions from across Asia converge, and where the daily environment of a hospitality student is the industry itself rather than a simulation of it. Learning to understand service, food culture, and guest experience in Bangkok means learning it in one of the world’s most naturally demanding and rewarding classrooms.

Bangkok University’s programmes are structured to take full advantage of that context. Students do not spend their years in education waiting for the industry to become relevant to them. Industry integration is built into the curriculum from the beginning, through real projects, partnerships with businesses, and a learning environment that the university has spent decades developing. The international internship programme extends this further, placing students across destinations including the UAE, Japan, Hong Kong, France and Spain, giving them exposure to hospitality contexts that are genuinely global in range before they graduate.

For Indian students specifically, this combination addresses something that matters deeply to families making this decision: not just whether the education is good, but whether it leads somewhere. The career pathways from Bangkok University’s hospitality and culinary programmes are tangible. Graduates have gone on to work with some of the most recognised names in global hospitality and consumer industries, names that Indian families know and respect. That is not an accident of geography. It is the result of what happens when an institution builds its curriculum around where the industry is actually going rather than where it has historically been.

There is also an argument to be made about cultural fluency. The hospitality industry at its most sophisticated is about understanding people: their expectations, their backgrounds, their definitions of comfort and care. A student who has studied and lived in Bangkok, within a campus community drawn from over 50 countries, and completed internships across multiple international markets, develops a cross-cultural intelligence that is genuinely difficult to acquire in a more homogeneous educational environment. This is the kind of preparation that luxury brands, which operate across cultures by definition, actively seek in the people they hire.

None of this is to say that European hospitality education has nothing to offer. The traditions are real and the training rigorous. But the argument that Europe is the only credible location for world-class hospitality education no longer holds when the industry’s growth, its hiring, and its future are so clearly oriented toward Asia. For an Indian student weighing where to build a career in hospitality or culinary arts, choosing to study in Thailand at an institution like Bangkok University is not a compromise. It is a considered, forward-looking decision about where the industry is headed and where the best opportunities will be found.

The world’s great hotel brands already know this. It is time for education to catch up.