From June 19 to 22, directors from the 50 Vatel Group Schools got together in Madrid, for the 13th International Vatel Convention. Vatel Madrid, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, hosted participants from 31 different countries.
Their agenda: sharing experiences, meeting one another, attending conferences and brainstorming about a school which has been reinventing the Vatel family for nearly 40 years.
There are no shortages of Vatel’s educational innovations stemming from these meetings: Marco Polo, an international exchange program for Vatel students, as well as 10 specializations in the last MBA year, without forgetting Magellan, an international exchange program for Vatel’s faculty members.
Vatel Group has thus placed academic stakes at the heart of its Convention this year once again. How can digital tools strengthen teaching quality? How can we meet new expectations students have in terms of training and careers? These questions were discussed through the prism of a global industry, without of course forgetting its many local specificities.
In the Convention, one of the highlights includes discovering new campuses that expand our network. This year, 9 new schools open their doors in the Vatel family:
In Mauritius
Vatel Rodrigues
In Vietnam
Vatel Hanoi
In Kazakhstan
Vatel Nursultan
Everyone confirmed this fact at the Convention: students now attending Vatel’s schools have different expectations than the previous generations had.
Vatel Bordeaux commissioned an international survey with OpinionWay* from students studying hotel management throughout the world and its results leave no doubt. For instance, it revealed that over half of the students studying hotel management see themselves running their own company as a mid-term objective. It also noted that compensation is not a key issue for them, though they dream of having regular and rapid raises: human relations and possibilities of promotions are their main concerns when they land their first job.
Resolutely optimistic, preferring entrepreneurship, very mobile, they want courses that are in line with their aspirations, in an attractive field that provides employment**.
In the hospitality and tourism fields, new technologies are at the origin of changes that have overturned ways to reserve rooms, types of accommodations and even the reputations that hotels have. They consequently must be included in our methods and courses. Our Group school directors enjoyed an interesting speech given by Emmanuel Davidenkoff on the links between education and digital technology and were able to take a concrete look at it in hospitality jobs: they were greeted and accompanied by Pepper, the Robot, who was the Convention’s emcee!
Nonetheless, the predominance of new technologies must not lead us to forget a key aspect, as Alain Sebban, the Group’s President and Founder, reminded us when he closed this Convention: all changes in our educational methods must always place human concerns at the heart of Vatel Group’s program.
Participants decided to meet again in 2020 in Podgorica, for the 14th Convention organized by Vatel Montenegro: in a country where the population increases fourfold during the peak tourist season, we’re sure that the next Vatel family reunion will be a positive one.
*Survey carried out with 3,116 students studying hospitality throughout the world, in a partnership with Eurhodip’s and AMFORHT’s professional associations.
**Tourism represents one job out of ten in the world. Source: World Tourism Organization.