Ira Vouk (author of "Hospitality 2.0", industry consultant, and tech innovator) and Carl Winston (founding Director of the Payne School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at SDSU) discuss the challenge that everyone is aware of but nobody talks about. There is currently a big gap between hospitality academia and the industry. On one hand, there is a lot of great research done by professors at various universities worldwide, and there are many great discoveries, however, those findings are rarely communicated to the industry (and if they are - the language is very hard to digest as those are purely scientific publications). At the same time, hospitality companies hardly ever reach out to the academic circles with information about what research is relevant and what problems need to be solved. As a result, professors continue to generate papers that are not necessarily always related to what the industry really needs. At the same time, they often continue teaching their students the same old concepts that are no longer applicable. During their discussion, Ira and Carl will attempt to answer the questions about why we"re facing this problem where the two worlds are drastically out of sync, and what we can do to start solving it.

Timeline:

00:30
Introduction, challenges that cause the disconnect between the industry and academia
02:23
How did we get there?
04:40
How to bring industry people to teach at hospitality schools
07:25
How to integrate industry knowledge into curriculum, especially dynamic content
12:50
Teaching Hospitality Technology
17:45
Partnerships between tech vendors and hospitality schools
20:28
Will we see more industry people being formally educated?
25:20
What is the benefit of having a degree?
28:20
How do we educate people who decide not to have it?
30:48
Closing