How one man builds a premier tourism school out of nowhere.
There was all round scepticism when Wong Khen Thau started Sabah’s first hospitality and tourism school in Kota Kinabalu 27 years ago. The hotel industry didn’t give him a chance to succeed because it thought that he was copying what hotels were already doing: on the job training of their frontline staff. Hoteliers didn’t think that he was offering anything new to the industry. And they were quite right to doubt him because Wong knew little about hotel and catering. He was a school teacher who had turned himself into a businessman selling home appliances. But all was not lost. His Asian Tourism Institute, staffed by a handful of hotel industry experts, received its first batch of 40 students for a six-month certificate course in food and beverage, housekeeping and front office operations – thanks to the sponsorship of then tourism minister Bernard Dompok. And from that small beginning, the Asian Tourism International College, as it is now known, has become the premier tourism and hotel and catering school which has produced more than 12,000 skilled workers for Sabah’s hotel industry, according to Mabel Cheong, the college’s registrar.
ATI was quick to silence its critics. Its pioneer students quickly found jobs and subsequent enrolment rose to 150 which boosted the school’s morale. Hoteliers were beginning to realise that ATI was becoming a bona fide trainer of frontline staff in their industry. The next year ATI again confounded its critics. Its students launched the Sabah Hospitality Fiesta that pitted hotel and catering staff against one and another to bring out the best of their skills in food preparation and housekeeping. Since then, the Sabah Hospitality Fiesta, now in its 23rd year, has become synonymous with ATI. (The Fiesta was absent for three years from 2020 to 2022 because of the Covid-19 pandemic).
In 2006, the Sabah and Labuan chapter of the Malaysian Association of Hotels, joined hands with ATI College in organising the Sabah Hospitality Fiesta, giving it the legitimacy that it deserves.
Although last November entry of 325 contestants fell short of 2019’s 377, 25 hotels, five restaurants and 11 institutions that offer hotel and catering courses took part in the Fiesta with the same gusto of the past years. Professionals and apprentices battled it out in the 26 categories of culinary and hospitality contests ranging from cooking, bar-tendering, bed-laying and setting up a dinner table.
And like ATI College, the Fiesta bears testimony to the vision of one-man: Wong Khen Thau who is the Fiesta’s advisor. He had been in fact extraordinary in his younger teaching days. At 23, he was probably the youngest school principal. He helmed the Mat Salleh government secondary school in the rural town of Ranau from 1973 to 1978 before his promotion as an education officer of the Sabah Education Department in 1981. The department had named him the best teacher of the year in 1976.
Wong has definitely brought his teaching experience to bear on ATI College whose courses are approved by the Ministry of Higher Education and accredited by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency. The college has been given a five-star rating for excellence by the Malaysian Quality Evaluation System.
Today ATI College takes in about 500 students a year for its two-year diploma and one-and-half-year certificate courses. Its success can be narrowed down to training technicians for the three areas of the hotel and catering industry: food and beverage, front office and housekeeping. These are the jobs that are in great demand. And ATI College graduates help to fill the vacuum. The college is one of the few which has been allowed to accept foreign students notably from China, Indonesia, Middle-East, Philippines, Brunei, Tunisia and South Korea. Thus the name “international”.
Wong’s next vision is to take the Fiesta to the international stage.
Sabah Insights 