Hospitality: gateway to many fields

Booking.com and TripAdvisor, smartphones and ADSL, social networks and big data: for the past 20 years, the world of hospitality has been in a state of flux. New tech-nologies, novel consumer behaviours and soaring expecta-tions have all transformed the way guests are served, as Mette Aalund Hagelskjaer, Sales Manager for the BC Hospitality Group, can confirm: ‘Hospitality has become much more digital, much faster-paced than it was 20 years ago. What’s more, with the recession of the early 2000s, we’ve seen belts being tightened; every process has had to become more efficient and more profitable.’

To meet these new needs and stay ahead of future trends, the schools in the Swiss Education Group (SEG) are in constant collaboration with professionals in the field. ‘We have a panel of industry leaders—hoteliers, researchers and teachers, lawyers, bankers—who share their thoughts on where the sector is going and the needs that are emer-ging. They fill us in on trends and we tailor our teaching content to their needs,’ explains Benoît Samson, Swiss Education Group’s Chief Brand and Marketing Officer.

This means that, with each new intake, students across

MUKESH VASANDANI, Vice President, Learning and Organisational

Development at Kerzner

International

‘We can’t just look for students with

solid school grades these days. We need

distinct personalities: you

can’t learn passion. Swiss Education

Group students are happy to talk to us

about their passions.’

WITH THEIR SECTOR UNDERGOING PROFOUND CHANGE OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS, HOSPITALITY SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN ADAPTING THEIR PROGRAMMES. THE SCHOOLS OF THE SWISS EDUCATION GROUP WORK WITH A PANEL OF INDUSTRY-LEADING PROFESSIONALS.

From Lucerne to Le Bouveret via Neuchâtel and Montreux, Swiss Education Group affirms its Swiss roots.

Swiss Education Group’s five schools and seven campuses are faced with the challenges of tomorrow—those they will have to tackle when they take up their top positions with the big names in hospitality but also in travel, luxury goods, finance and events. For that’s another key feature of what’s been happening in hospitality for the last 30 years: while the golden ticket which propelled each student from hospi-tality school to a prestigious employer is alive and well (in fact, partnerships with the major hotel groups have been strengthened over the years), job opportunities are now found in a broader and more diverse panoply of fields.

SETTING SAIL… AND TAKING FLIGHTRalf Boettinger is a case in point. The 27-year-old Bavarian student is currently enrolled at the IHTTI School of Hotel Management in Neuchâtel and is planning to specialise in hotel and restaurant design: ‘It’s not what I had in mind as an area of specialism. I’d done a few work placements and I knew I wanted to work in this sector. But it was only when I started at the School that I chose to specialise in design and business management with a view to setting up my own company fitting out hotels and restaurants further down the line.’

The world of travel presents some noteworthy job pros-pects too. The cruise industry has been growing rapidly for 15 years and is now coming to Switzerland to sniff out its talent: ‘We’re in the process of building ten ships and re-cruiting 15,000 staff, including managers. Here at Swiss Education Group we find highly qualified individuals with a broader range of experience and skills than those we find elsewhere,’ observes Berry van Veldhoven of Royal Caribbean. He has an extremely diverse array of positions

MARK MOSIMANN,

Manager of the Mosimann Group

‘There are many hospitality schools

in Switzerland, and they’re among the best in the world.

Recruiters need to be present to gain

access to the top talents and offer

them exciting challenges the world

over.’

Swiss Education Group sets itself apart from other hospitality courses in Switzerland with its emphasis on culinary arts.

CASPER JAKOBSEN, Student at the César

Ritz College in Brig

‘Before I came to Switzerland, I studied

at a school with a large student body.

At the César Ritz College in Brig, I

discovered small-group learning, which allows teachers

to delve deeper and monitor students in a

more personalised way.’

and roles to offer in the cruise sector: ‘We cover all the roles typically found in hospitality, casinos, the performing arts, and the travel and leisure industries. For young graduates wanting to try out a range of roles, a cruise ship is like an entire town; they can do several different jobs.’

As well as setting sail, there are also opportunities to take flight. Eric Bösiger, PR and Marketing, Cabin Crew at SWISS, rates Swiss Education Group students highly: ‘Our clientele is international and multilingual, and our roles involve working irregular hours. Swiss Education Group graduates are a perfect fit, as they are flexible, open-minded, competent, conscientious young people who know how to work as part of a team.’

‘The hospitality sector has broadened out a lot over the past few years. Into travel and design, certainly, but also luxury goods, finance, spas… Hospitality is still the golden ticket, with exciting prospects, but our students acquire skills that will stand them in good stead for a variety of fields. They become excellent managers and businesspeople, too,’ promises Florent Rondez, Swiss Education Group’s CEO.

The next challenges pertain to the environment and sustainability. While COP21 set ambitious goals on curbing global warming, the hospitality sector has already set to work on this too. ‘Companies in the sector are increasingly conscious of the challenges and are implementing strate-gies in a number of different areas of their daily operations. Now that the recession of the 2000s is over, hotel groups can focus on preserving the planet rather than profits alone. Our students are aware of this, and we encourage them to find creative new solutions to the sustainability conundrum,’ adds Florent Rondez.

The IRF allows Swiss Education Group students to build a solid network.

Where networks are forgedTHE SWISS EDUCATION GROUP HAS FOUNDED AN EVENT CONNECTING STUDENTS AND PROFESSIONALS THAT IS UNPARALLELED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD OF HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT.

We’re surrounded by walls that have welcomed the biggest names in the international music scene. But every year, the Montreux Music and Convention Centre on the shores of Lake Geneva welcomes 2,300 students from the five schools of the Swiss Education Group (SEG). On this particular morning, the place is abuzz: 250 recruiters are expected to conduct thousands of interviews here in the space of two days. ‘The IRF is one of the highpoints of the Swiss education group calendar; it’s the time when our students’ careers are launched, the time when they show the breadth of their knowledge and skills,’ explains Florent Rondez, Swiss Education Group’s CEO. ‘IRF’ stands for International Recruitment Forum, a one-of-a-kind event in the world of hospitality management schools. Nowhere else do students come face to face with so many senior decision makers from 70 different industries and representing the most prestigious and powerful brands in the world.

For Casper Jakobsen, a student at the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) in Leysin, this is his fourth IRF. ‘At first it’s a fantastic way to make new contacts, but it also allows you to maintain and strengthen those contacts as the years go by. In our field, networking is key. And the IRF allows you to build up a substantial network with top professionals.’

CUSTOMER FOCUSMette Aalund Hagelskjaer, Sales Manager at the BC Hospitality Group, agrees: an alumna of the Hotel Institute Montreux (HIM), the IRF didn’t exist when she completed one of Swiss Education Group’s programmes 20 years ago, but she concedes that ‘it would have been an excellent opportunity to forge a network from the very launch of [her] career’. She now comes to the IRF to recruit the students who are following in her footsteps in the corridors of the Swiss schools. She underscores the importance of networking: ‘Listening to influencers, key names in the sector, decision makers, analysts, managers and also clients gives us a clearer insight into customers’ needs and wants, allowing us to remain abreast of them and even sometimes to get one step ahead of them so that we can exceed their expectations.’

This focus on the customer is what Mukesh Vasandani, Vice President, Learning and Organisational Development at Kerzner International, hones in on: ‘At Swiss Education Group’s schools, a great deal of attention is paid to hands-on learning, expertise and meticulous and personalised customer relations. This is what we see over time with our recruits from these schools, but we can also see it just at the IRF through the students’ outs-tanding attitude.’

So the IRF shows how important customer relations are for Swiss Education Group. ‘In this increasingly

ERIC BÖSIGER, PR and Marketing, Cabin Crew at

SWISS

‘Swiss Education Group students

bring a number of advantages, and for

an airline one of them is that they’re

familiar with, and at ease developing

in, an international, multilingual

environment, while at the same time

working irregular hours.’

METTE AALUND HAGELSKJAER,

Sales Manager at the BC Hospitality Group and Swiss Education Group

alumna

‘Over the last 20 years, hospitality has become much more modern and

diverse. To succeed nowadays you need

to stand out from the crowd and find

your niche. To achieve that,

ironically, you need to look at what the

competition is doing, conduct surveys,

ask for customers’ opinions.’

BERRY VAN VELDHOVEN, Royal

Caribbean

‘Coming into contact with students of

various schools here at the IRF allows

recruiters to see a truly diverse range of individuals and

skills, which is crucial when putting

together motivated teams of people who

can work well together.’

virtual, online world, we still focus on the people-to-people side of things. People share things; they learn stories from one another that they could never find in books or on screens. The day there is no more human interaction in this profession will be the day I go and do something else,’ affirms Florent Rondez.

‘AMBASSADORS’ FOR SWISS EDUCATION GROUPWhen he founded the IRF less than a decade ago, Benoît Samson, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer for Swiss Education Group, was aiming to streamline the interview process for recruiters and students. ‘But I wanted the professionals to hold their meetings in the most comfor-table setting possible, so we take care of everything, from accommodation to transportation and catering; we try to meet all the participants’ needs. This allows us both to exhibit our skills, which are at the heart of our business, and to give the recruiters the chance to really concentrate on the interviews so that they are fully focused on our young students’ talents,’ he explains.

For Florent Rondez, the IRF goes even further than that nowadays: ‘As well as the interviews, we convene panels on topical issues in our field featuring prominent speakers. This allows our students to learn more about pivotal as-pects of the sector and meet the people who are working at the core of the major issues in 21st-century hospitality.’

For the students, whom Swiss Education Group’s CEO refers to as the Group’s ‘ambassadors’, the IRF thus repre-sents a unique event and an opportunity to carve out their own place in the professional world, laying the foundations for their future careers.

RALF BÖTTINGER, Student at IHTTI

School of Hotel Management

Neuchâtel

‘Before anyone founds their own

business, they must be familiar with people and have

their own networks: the hospitality sector

is increasingly personalised where both customers and

partners are concerned. The IRF

is an opportunity to forge that network

and meet key players in the

industry.’

Swiss Education Group brings together recruiters from around the world at the IRF.

Where networks are forged