Free Resources for Hospitality Business Recovery

To support the hospitality industry, EHL has set up an online portal bringing together faculty research, web shows, access to pro bono advice, and free online courses.

Call to Action

According to the World Travel and Tourism Organization, the travel and tourism sector is one of the world’s largest economic sectors, supporting one in 10 jobs (330 million) worldwide, and generating 10.3 percent of global GDP. Unfortunately, it is also one of the industries most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the many challenges ahead until the hospitality industry can recover from the devastating effects of the crisis, all Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) Group entities have come together to create an online platform where hospitality professionals can draw from their collective knowledge to help curb the effects of various lockdowns and strict sanitary measures around the world.

The EHL Education Group’s intent is to provide perspective and actionable business intelligence, as well as much needed hope to encourage the global market actors in these trying times. Many hospitality professionals around the world are scrambling to ensure the livelihood of their staff and keep their business afloat. As a global No. 1 hospitality management school according to industry and higher education rankings, with over 3,000 students, 120 nationalities among its student body, three international campuses, and 25,000 alumni worldwide, EHL has the legitimacy but also the great responsibility to “walk the talk” and be vocal during these challenging times.

Description

Since the beginning of the pandemic, all entities of EHL Education Group joined forces to provide support and hope to industry professionals. The following actions and/or projects have been implemented:

• RISE webinars: RISE is a weekly live web show where EHL professor Demian Hodari and special advisor to the United Nations World Tourism Organization Anita Mendiratta, together with an array of industry leaders, university professors, and current students, work through the COVID situation in an engaging, personal, and unique way. Due to popular demand, the series is being continued, having produced 16 episodes to date.
• Thought leadership articles: Faculty members are actively producing thought leadership content on topics such as how to survive COVID-19 and innovations provoked by the pandemic. This EHL initiative has also brought external companies on board to work with students and alumni on blog contributions and deliver high-quality content on the COVID topic, such as Global Asset Solutions: https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/author/global-asset-solutions
• Free online course: A temporary, free-access online course extracted from the MBA in hospitality program, this condensed version of the course on Managing Underperforming Properties was made available to all industry professionals looking to mitigate losses.
• Ask our Experts: Through this resource portal, EHL Advisory Services, the group’s hospitality consulting entity, is offering pro bono advice in a subsection called “You ask, we answer.”

Impact

The EHL free resources have been received by industry professionals and hospitality students. We obtained excellent results that confirm this success:

• More than 40 companies from 24 countries received pro bono advice from our industry experts.
• Over 900 new industry contacts have been generated.
• Around 500 people have regularly participated in the RISE web series.
• More than 140,000 views of the free resources (pages and articles) have been generated.
• Over 1,800 people have taken the free online course, Essentials of Managing Underperforming Properties.
• Over 100 insights and tips related to the COVID-19 crisis have been published on blogs.
• EHL content views to date are 43 percent higher than for the full year of 2019.
• Organic views are 63 percent higher to date than for the full year of 2019.
• While our objective was to help our industry, EHL’s initiative reinforced its visibility among key target markets.

Reference Links:

• Resources for the Hospitality Industry Turnaround Post-Coronavirus
• RISE Webinar: The Best in Hospitality Debate
• RISE Weekly Episode: Hotels: Mixing It Up