Opinion Articles

Balancing Diversity in the Hospitality Industry

In the bustling world of hospitality, hotels serve as microcosms of society, welcoming guests from diverse backgrounds, while also employing teams of individuals with varied experiences and perspectives. At the heart of this dynamic ecosystem lies a delicate balance between owners, guests, and team members, each bringing their unique essence to the table.

Winning Moves: How Hospitality Can Score Big with AI

Having once again demonstrated its resilience in the face of long-term labor shortages, inflationary pressures and geopolitical uncertainty, the U.S. economy remains the envy of the world. However, two parallel and contradictory trends - the spread of the union contagion pushing into new sectors and the growing pull of the freelancer gig economy (which represents 56 million Americans or 36% of the workforce) - reflect elevated levels of distrust in the corporate world and all levels of government. These trends have spilled into a now turbulent technology sector which is shedding thousands of jobs being replaced by artificial intelligence, accelerating the discontinuity called a talent disruption, the title of my book. In many traditional industries, even business leaders in touch with the times are scratching their heads and asking, Where did all the workers go? However, there is an industry that continues to defy the odds and thrive in the labor market, with an abundant supply of talent and unit labor economics that remain favorable: professional sports.

Are you trapped by the similarity effect in your hiring decisions?

Have you ever preferred a candidate because of their similarity to you on various criteria? Did you grow up in the same village? Did they come from the same foreign country as you? Perhaps they also liked running or had four kids just like you? If you preferred and selected this candidate, then you were influenced by a bias called the similarity effect. This effect has shown that the more similar two individuals are, the greater the attraction between them. Wondering whether recruiters might be attracted to candidates with similar personality traits, we recently conducted a study to investigate this question, and you might be surprised by the results.

What is my teaching style? Ways to improve as a teacher

Where to begin when evaluating the effectiveness of a course and its teacher? What criteria to follow if a teacher wants to improve their delivery style and program objectives? In this article, Dr Sebastien Fernandez, EHL Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, looks at how the art of teaching can be enhanced by understanding one’s teaching ‘signature’, i.e., a teaching style or personality that can be broken down into measurable compartments so that both teachers and students are better equipped for evaluations upon which improvement and progress depends.

A major culture problem: why people don’t want to work in hospitality

Plugging the huge shortage of staff in the hospitality sector is a narrative we’ve been grappling with for years now. People are no longer surprised to hear that there are more than 100,000 vacancies in hospitality at any one time, nor that the proportion of vacancies has increased by 48% since the Covid-19 pandemic (UK Hospitality).

CEO Pay in Hospitality 2023

The last time we did our CEO pay study it was pre-Covid, and things were looking very bright. Then the bottom fell out. Now in a post-Covid environment, it’s interesting to see some companies experiencing total recovery, while others have faced longer structural change. For example, public hotel companies, by and large, have had stock prices completely recovered, versus cruise lines, which have seen stock prices that have remained depressed by nearly 50%. Likewise, CEO pay has rebounded in a similar fashion.

Exploring the future of higher education with Luciana Vaccaro

Rector of HES-SO and president of swissuniversities, Dr Luciana Vaccaro, presented her priorities in the evolving higher education landscape and looked at ways of strengthening the collaboration with EHL at this important moment in time. Against the backdrop of global challenges, tech advancements and changing paradigms in teaching and learning, three overarching themes emerge as the critical pillars supporting the strategic trajectory of modern higher education for both HES-SO and EHL: internationalization, digitalization and continued learning - Welcome to the future of higher education!