Fifteen Egyptian-Italian hotel schools opened this academic year, welcoming 1.5k enrolled students, an Education Ministry official tells EnterpriseAM. The applied-technology schools run under the name “8ones” and aim to prepare qualified technical staff for the hospitality market, according to the Education Ministry’s 3 August statement. The new schools come as the state works toward its target of 500k hotel rooms by 2030 (220k more than today), as we reported in September.

Those rooms need employees to maintain them, and technical staff are in short supply: The market needs cooks, waiters, and housekeepers more urgently than it needs bachelor’s degree holders, Egyptian Travel Agents Association Board Member Magdy Sadek tells us, and non-specialists are filling the gap. A large share of major properties in Hurghada, Safaga, Marsa Alam, South Sinai, and the North Coast “relies on workers who aren’t graduates of tourism and hotel faculties or institutes,” Mansoura University tourism and hotels faculty dean Mohamed Abdel Latif tells EnterpriseAM. Those hires don’t have technical qualifications and take longer to settle into the work, Sadek adds.

Right now, training schools are concentrated in Greater Cairo: According to an Education Ministry brief (pdf), there were 166 hotel secondary schools operating in the 2025/26 academic year: Cairo had 34, Giza 16, and Qalyubia 12. If you count by students rather than by schools, the gap widens. The three Greater Cairo governorates hold 58% of hotel-school students across 62 schools. Compare that to the Red Sea, South Sinai, Luxor, and Matrouh, which have under 4% of hotel-school students across a total of 12 schools. None of the 15 new 8ones schools are in those four governorates, and six are in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria, according to the ministry’s list.

And the track is small: Hotel secondary schools enrolled some 64.3k students in 2025/26, about 3% of Egypt’s 1.98 mn technical secondary students, the data shows. For reference, industrial schools enrolled 970k that year, commercial 750k, and agricultural 199k. “Enrollment is low because prospects are limited and wages are low,” the ministry official tells us. Hotel jobs also require skills that existing hotel secondary education doesn’t provide, he adds.

The 8ones model pairs classroom and workplace training: The schools are part of the Egypt-Italy technical education partnership we covered in December, with Italy’s Engim-Farma-Giulio Natta Academy working with three of them and San Paolo Hospitality Academy working with 12, the ministry said in its 3 August statement. After preparatory school, students enroll in the five-year program, studying Italian and English alongside technical subjects, with practical training at school and in workplaces, according to the program’s official Facebook page. Graduates “come out with some understanding of the hospitality field, instead of leaving high school with no idea at all,” Alexandria University tourism and hotels faculty professor Mohamed Gamal tells EnterpriseAM.

Demand outstripped places: More than 5k students applied for the schools, the ministry official says. Each school caps enrollment at 100 students to focus on hands-on learning and educational quality, he tells us. The curricula meet international labor-market requirements, which means graduates can work abroad and earn higher wages, he adds.

But training more workers only addresses one side of the shortage. Gamal also brings up a problem with turnover, pointing to a training program between Alexandria University and Four Seasons Hotel Alexandria, which covers rooms and food and beverage. Both departments have very high turnover because “pay is low and many staff work part-time or on a temporary basis,” he says. Hotels need to attract workers with strong skills, including in digital work and innovation, while developing and keeping the people they already have, he adds.

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