Historic first broadcast for hoteliers

History was made during the recent General Managers' conference when it was broadcast live to ten universities and hotel schools in the UK and Europe.

Over 700 students and academic staff watched the conference on monitors in lecture halls - believed to be the first time this has been attempted anywhere in the world.

The conference, held at The Landmark Hotel in London and organised by the Master Innholders for hotel general managers, was attended by a record 300 delegates.

The feedback from the students who watched the conference was overwhelmingly positive and students were also able to question the speakers.

DVDs of the conference have been distributed to the ten hotel schools so that lecturers can pick individual sessions or reuse particular slides in their lectures.

Andrew McKenzie, chairman of the Master Innholders said the experiment suddenly opened up the conference to a huge audience of aspiring hoteliers.

"It has clearly been a huge success and we will definitely repeat it next year, adding more hotel schools around the world. We are indebted to Ian Scarth from Lausanne Ecole Hoteliere for developing the concept and for organising the broadcast for us"

The participating universities and hotel schools were:

Bournemouth University
Westminster Kingsway University
University College Birmingham
Thames Valley University
Oxford Brookes University
Surrey University
Sheffield Hallam University
Llandrillo College in Wales
The Hague Hotelschool
Lausanne Ecole Hoteliere

Words: Clare Riley

« Back to previous page