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Today there can be few more exciting, challenging and varied career - offering opportunities for fast promotion - than those offered by the hospitality, tourism and leisure industry. This is the world's fastest-growing, job-creating profession.

The hospitality industry has been experiencing a boom time. A plethora of new hotels have been opened; contract catering is becoming an ever-stronger force to be reckoned with; new concepts are abounding; and there is a constant need for top-level industry consultants to advise on the profession as its trans-global expansion continues apace.

One of the many wonderful aspects of this industry is the flexibility and choice it offers. You can start working in hotels, and if that doesn't suit, you can change to contract catering or use your experience to go into consultancy, manage a bar, run a restaurant or fast-food outlet, or even aspire to becoming the new Jamie Oliver! If you love action and adventure, then there is the forces' catering sector. If your talents lie in accountancy, then you could become the financial director of a large hotel or catering company. If you are an Information Technology (IT) geek, the profession is in constant need of IT specialists. In short, there is a job to suit just about everyone!

The enormous scope for movement between the industry's many and varied sectors is a vital consideration in view of the uncertainty of today's job market, where the idea of a 'job for life' is rapidly disappearing.

The media has been filled in recent times with stories about more and more people looking for vocational courses, offering better long-term job prospects - a need made even more acute by the fact that the majority of students today have to contribute financially to their tutorial fees. The hospitality and leisure industry undoubtedly provides a very attractive option in this respect.

The profession currently employs one-in-ten people worldwide. A total of 30-35,000 trained people are required at management and supervisory level every year in the UK alone until 2010 to fulfil this potential. The good news for job seekers is that our best estimations currently show that too few students per annum are embarking upon college and university courses. There is therefore an enormous opportunity for thousands of job seekers to pursue rewarding careers in this exciting growth industry.

What is more, the industry is taking itself seriously and planning for the future, with the HCIMA's assistance. This organisation is the London-based worldwide professional body for managers and aspiring managers in the hospitality industry - with a global membership of 23,000. One of our priority objectives is the setting and maintaining of management standards worldwide; and we are constantly seeking to help the hospitality profession maximise its potential through valuing its greatest asset: its management and staff.

Toward this end, the HCIMA introduced in 1998 'Hospitality Assured', the definitive industry standard for delivering customer service excellence. Concerns about low performance of some hotel and catering operators had led the industry to give the HCIMA a mandate to develop 'Hospitality Assured'. To date, over fifty national and international operations have been accredited with the standard. They range from hotel companies - such as Radisson SAS in Malta and de Veer - and food organisations, like Sodexho at British American Tobacco, to famous names in the leisure industry such as Center Parcs and Warner Holidays.

This scheme - together with the increasing number of hospitality industry businesses seeking 'Investors in People' recognition and other industry-related standards - illustrates the tremendous strides that the profession has taken in becoming an industry of first choice' for potential employees.

However, a criticism often levelled at the hospitality profession is that it involves working long, often unsocial hours. Certainly, a rewarding career in the hotel industry does require a strong personal commitment for those very reasons. But if a person wants to work normal daytime working hours, then the food-service sector provides an ideal option offering tremendous job satisfaction, fast promotion and good financial remuneration. Basically, the industry is whatever you make of its unrivalled career opportunities.