Business students prepare for hard-hit hospitality sector

From researching hospitality masters degrees during lockdown deep in the French countryside to beginning his career in Dubai’s towering, sail-like Burj Al Arab Jumeirah hotel, Thibault Dumas has been on a steep learning curve. Now a revenue management executive at the hotel — at 1,053ft one of the tallest in the world — Dumas (above) graduated last year with a masters from the EHL Hospitality Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. His programme — an MSc in Global Hospitality Business — is one of several courses worldwide preparing students for a sector hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Covid-19 affected Dumas’s studies and continues to cast a long shadow over the industry. “Starting a masters in global hospitality during a pandemic might seem crazy,” he admits. “In 18 months, we had to study on three continents, including Asia, which had strict sanitary measures, and apply for three different visas.

“Our European field trip had to be cancelled, but in Hong Kong we were able to experience and meet executives from some of the most iconic hotel brands, including the Shangri-La, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula and Rosewood.” Dumas’s programme is run by EHL in partnership with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and the University of Houston in Texas. In his current role, he uses data analytics to understand customer behaviour and optimise hotel revenue by what he describes as offering the right room for the right person at the right time. “The revenue management courses we took on the masters have been of enormous help,” he recalls. “[We] were divided into teams and competed against each other using revenue management simulation software to generate the best results. Knowing the situation of the hospitality industry at that time — and the shortage of job opportunities — pushed me to study even harder.”