February 19, 2016 – Happy Lunar New Year! The first Master of Global Hospitality Business cohort has embarked on its second chapter of our 3continents3semesters journey and we were fortunate enough to spend the Lunar New Year celebration in the heart of Hong Kong. With our semester at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne behind us, we are now embracing the Asia portion of our global hospitality program. Not only are the differences between the cities, countries, people, culture, and food significant, but the hospitality industry is almost incomparable. While the hotel industry has its extensive and grand history in Europe, as we saw first hand on our Europe Business Field Trip to Paris, Rome, and Berlin, we are now experiencing the shift of the fast-paced, growing industry in Asia. Throughout our semester in Hong Kong at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, we will be learning, inside and outside of the classroom, about the current situation of the hospitality industry and where the market is heading towards during this exciting period of time for hotels in Asia.
As Professor Kaye Chon, Dean and Chair Professor at our new home of SHTM at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University has advocated, the hospitality industry is experiencing a shift in its center of gravity as a new wave has arrived in hotel and tourism education, known as the “Asian paradigm.”
Using the knowledge we acquired from our intensive European semester at the world-renowned Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne as our foundation, we hope to build onto our education with the new Asian experiences we expect to gain over the next few months. Through our studies and travels, the MGH candidates will continue to feel the growth of the “Asian paradigm” as we ride along this exciting wave of a new and unfamiliar hotel market in Hong Kong and the rest of Asia.
-Kristina Park
Student, MSc Global Hospitality Business
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