HOTEL schools or more formally called as educational institutions catering to the hospitality industry indeed have a more relevant role in 2008. With the onset of a recession in the United States that may have repercussions for the rest of the planet, hospitality professors have a role in how to educate their students to steer the whole populace to spend in tourism.

The best hospitality universities in the world are found in Switzerland. There, you can find students from various continents such as Asia, North America, Mexico and even the Middle East. Teaching there is regionalized i.e. students who come from Asia and are expected to be deployed there must know the culture in Hong Kong rather than the Aztec culture in Mexico. However, students coming from Mexico who will be deployed in Cancun or the Caribbean areas must know the culture as well as the languages here too.

It will definitely be the challenge of these students on how to innovate resorts in their respective localities to lure tourists in. For example, in Spain there is an emerging trend in beach hotels there. Almost all of the beach hotels already have 24-hour nurseries run by child psychologists and equipped with state-of-the-art playing facilities. This has been installed since the Madeleine McCann kidnapping in 2007 for couples with toddlers in tow desiring to have some intimacy minus their child. And this innovation indeed worked. Statistics from the Spanish tourism ministry show that there has been a surge of honeymooners with toddlers in the country. In fact, this practice is not just limited among the beach resorts in Spain but all around the Iberian Peninsula.

In the United States, Robert Redford is making a plan for his Sundance resort in Utah to establish a skiing school for kids during summer. Sundance is of course named after his character in the movie which he starred in, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sundance resort is a natural skiing phenomenon and looks like an almost-perfect paradise. Too bad most of the people who go there during summer are only the ones studying films. To lure mainstream tourists in, Redford has decided to put up a skating school there.

Now we know all too well that Lake Tahoe has been devastated by a fire last summer. To lure tourists in, resorts in Lake Tahoe are turning to ingenuity – they intend to preserve some of the ruins as a stark reminder to tourists that throwing cigarette butts in a forest is terribly bad.

By the way, education in hospitality colleges is not just limited to those intending to work in resorts as managers and culinary supervisors. They are also meant for plane stewards and stewardesses as well. This year, more and more passenger airlines are luring in more passengers through innovative ways. Among them are Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways and Ryanair. If you are a stewardess in any of these, you will surely have the ride of your life enjoying entertaining tourist passengers.

ONE of the more exciting careers a person can have is to be in the hospitality industry at any country. Right now, it is the peak of winter in the northern and middle regions of the world such as North America, Europe and certain countries in northern Asia like Japan, South Korea, China, Nepal and Mongolia. It is also the peak of summer in the southern hemispheres of the globe such as Tonga, New Zealand and Australia. So whichever part of the world you want to spend your vacation this January, there is really a place for you.

For example, if you are someone coming from the United States, you may want to spend your January either in Lake Tahoe or in Sundance. Lake Tahoe is located in the middle of California and Nevada. Aside from the usual skiing resorts, there are lots of casinos there as well as lake houses for rent with a very magnificent view of the lake indeed. And then there’s Sundance. Sundance is a 500-acre resort in Utah just 100 miles from Salt Lake City. It seems that development of the place has stopped two millennia ago for everything is natural – from the fauna to the contours of the ski trails. Sundance emanates from Robert Redford’s character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Aside from being a ski resort, Sundance is also a film institute for up and coming film directors. In fact, Sundance is the staging platform for such directors as Quentin Tarantino. The annual Sundance Festival rivals that of the Cannes Festival in France.

Meanwhile, it’s the middle of summer right there in Australia so Caucasians from the United States and Canada may as well troop to the beaches of Australia to tan themselves. After all, this is what Caucasians love. They love to tan. But even though there are places in the world which are in the middle of summer right now while others are in the middle of winter, there are also places which have their own micro-climates. Consider the Mediterranean regions of Spain for example. Places like Costa Blanca enjoy a temperate climate even in the middle of winter. Although temperatures in tropical places like Phuket in Thailand and Boracay in the Philippines reached up to 3 degrees Celsius, they are still warm by European standards.

It is in this regard that the hospitality industry all over the world is very much vibrant at any given period of the year. Because as Europe, Asia and North America experience summer in June, Australia and New Zealand will experience winter during that time. That is why there are lots of hospitality colleges in the world. But unarguably, the best hotel schools in the world are located in Switzerland. They are the crème de la crème in the world because all of their students undergo internships and on-the-job training only in five-star hotels and cruise ships. Now, isn’t that amazing? Enroll in a hospitality college today.