First Young Hoteliers Summit Closes
The Ecole hotelière de Lausanne (EHL) and the Career Club were proud to host the first Young Hoteliers Summit
The Young Hoteliers Summit 2010 was an all around huge success for its participants, the organizing team and industry leaders of the hospitality industry. The first of its kind, this hospitality summit, was organized for students by students. It was the first step towards enhancing communication between various international hospitality schools around the world and building a bridge with the industry. 'It is the beginning of something new and different in this very conservative and traditional hospitality industry', one of the delegates pointed out. Industry leaders such as Guy Crawford (CEO Jumeirah Group), Michael Levie (CEO CitizenM) and David Cochrane (CEO Hospitality Industry Trust Scotland) remained amazed, expressing their compliments to the whole organizing team and its Co-Founders, namely Rachel Crawford, Christophe Oneyser, Youri Sawerschel and Anil Varghese, all EHL students, for putting together a unique opportunity, not only for international hospitality students but also for them, as industry leaders, to witness the future generation of leaders.
The Young Hoteliers Summit 2010 brought together nine of the most prestigious international hotel schools around the world in order to solve a Creativity Challenge proposed by the Jumeirah Group. The question of this Challenge -'In the face of an overall decrease in demand, how to boost occupancy levels in luxury hotels without pushing prices lower?'- needed to be solved and presented to a jury. The 8 teams composed of students from different hotel schools had only 4 hours to prepare their solution. The jury consisted of Guy Crawford, Kevin Coleman (Vice President Market Strategy Jumeirah Group) , David Cochrane and Robert Trocme (Head of Development EHL).
In order to help generate ideas, students worked together with BrainStore in the morning of the first day of the event, attended a panel consisting of EHL students and industry leaders, various speeches by Michael Levie, David Cochrane and Guy Crawford as well as workshops centred around the given creativity challenge.
The highlight of the Young Hoteliers Summit was definitely on Friday the 29th of January at 16:45pm. At that time, the 8 teams had to convince the jury during an 8 minutes presentation that their solution to the given problem represented the most valuable approach and should therefore be implemented into the Jumeirah Group strategy. After considering eight creative and innovative ideas presented by the students, the jury had to decide on a winning team. 'Characterize your room' was the new innovative concept that convinced the jury. The team that came up with this concept will be offered a five day trip to Dubai, where they will have the opportunity to shadow the executives of the corporate headquarters of the Jumeirah Group. Expedia will be sponsoring the flights to Dubai where the winning students will be offered a stay at a Jumeirah property. Despite there being only one winner, the Jumeirah Group will be using a number of ideas that have been presented.
The entire YHS delegation, the Career Club and the Ecole hotelière de Lausanne would like to congratulate the winning team and are proud to be the initiator and official organizer of the first Young Hoteliers Summit 2010 and are already looking forward to YHS 2011! (For sponsorship or collaboration please see contact details below).
What is the Young Hoteliers Summit?
The Young Hotelier Summit (YHS) is a project initiated by the Career Club, a student-run organization at the Ecole hotelière de Lausanne (EHL). The event will be held on January 28th & 29th 2010 with the aim of broadening the communication between international hotel schools. YHS will feature a competition amongst teams composed of members from different participating schools competing against each other to give solutions to a creativity challenge proposed by the Jumeirah Group. In addition, an enriching program of presentations, panels and workshops will be organized around the topics raised in the creativity challenge.
Participating schools
Hotelschool the Hague (Netherlands)
Rosen College of Hospitality Management (USA)
Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Hotel and Tourism Management
Sagesse University of Hospitality Management (Lebanon)
Breda University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)
Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management (United Arab Emirates)
Institute of Hotel Management Aurangabad (India)
Shannon College of Hotel Management (Ireland)
Official sponsors
Lausanne Hospitality Consulting (LHC)
Taj Hotels and Resorts
YHS Press Contact
Alina Swirski (French, German, English, Italian)
T (+41) 79 917 3546
E [email protected]
Ecole hotelière de Lausanne
Route de Cojonnex, Case postale 37, 1000 Lausanne 25, Switzerland
http://www.ehl-careerclub.ch
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