Spokane has long enjoyed strong-rooted success in community involvement and with marquee local events such as Hoopfest and Bloomsday, both of which draw national participation. Add to this the construction underway at the Davenport Grand Hotel, and it’s not hard to see that the state of hospitality in Spokane is booming. 

These exciting hotel developments are helping to fill a growing need for a convention headquarters hotel that can provide much needed accommodations for existing events as well as attract new, large-scale events to the area. The opportunities they will afford our community are endless and have the potential to make Spokane a destination for world-class events. 

With these types of community shifts occurring, training the workforce to properly staff this expansion is top of mind—especially for Washington State University’s Carson College of Business. 

The Carson College continually looks for ways to serve students better and provide communities with access to the best experts in the hospitality industry. For the last several years, the hospitality business management (HBM) program has been housed primarily on the Pullman campus. Recently, we have made a concerted effort to expand our reach not only within the state and region, but also across the globe. In response to a greater market, we launched the program at the WSU Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Everett campuses. The program is also offered in Brig, Switzerland. 

Our research shows there is a significant demand for an advanced degree with an emphasis in HBM in Washington, and this is why we’re moving forward. I’m pleased to say the HBM program will be offered online for the first time this fall, along with the inclusion of a hospitality and tourism emphasis for WSU’s top-ranked online MBA program. By providing the program online, our students, many of whom can’t afford to go back to school full time, now have the flexibility to continue working in their field while achieving a secondary degree that often is necessary to move to the next career level.

We’ll also be offering similar opportunities for undergraduates. While many students will choose the full-experience in Pullman or one of our urban campuses, the online undergraduate pro-gram is great for individuals who already started their career in the hospitality industry or need additional certification. The program has been modeled after our top online business graduate programs providing shorter course periods that offer a higher level of flexibility. 

Additionally, students participating in these online and campus-based programs may have access to courses across the state through video streaming. This provides students with greater opportunities to hear from high-profile industry leaders from anywhere. The Carson College’s goal is to enable best-in-class learning to all HBM students, regardless of their physical location.

As the HBM program continues to expand to WSU’s urban campuses, our hope is that each campus will develop its own specialty of excellence within the program. 

For example, with Spokane in our backyard, it would make sense to ramp up our coursework in mega-event planning and conference and convention management. This would provide exciting new job opportunities for our local graduates in the area. 

Programs potentially could revolve around destination activities and how to accommodate them within a community such as Spokane. 

In Everett, the HBM program will focus on a specialization in senior living due to the proximity of several major senior living communities in Snohomish County and the greater Puget Sound area. 

The Tri-Cities program currently specializes in wine business management, given its location within one of the state’s top wine-growing regions. 

With the construction of the new state-of-the-art Wine Science Center set to open this fall, program participants have an opportunity to learn from local experts, as well as work and interact with students and staff involved in WSU’s Viticulture and Enology program. 

Vancouver has a long-standing professional sales certificate program that will complement the newly introduced HBM degree program at that campus. 

We believe these combined offerings will give future hoteliers a strong skill set and prepare them for the next level.

While opportunities abound for our students—both in Pullman and at urban campuses, such as Spokane—the communities also benefit from our course requirement of practical, real-world experience. 

This helps advance our students to the next level. Students must fulfill 1,000 hours in the hospitality industry and earn an employer evaluation score of 80 percent or higher. Students apply their classroom learning directly to what they are doing in the workplace.

Currently, many local companies employ students from the Spokane area, including in internships and summer jobs at local hotels and restaurants such as the Davenport, Northern Quest Resort & Casino, and the Old Spaghetti Factory, among others. 

As Spokane continues to enjoy hospitality growth, residents can expect to see the continued benefits of Carson College graduates. With proactive education that maps to community needs and desires of the student population, we are confident that Spokane is poised to become a national hospitality hotspot.

Nancy Swanger is the director of the hospitality business management program at Washington State University.