It is hard to force yourself to get up early, attend lectures, prepare lessons, and generally think about anything serious when outside the window there is endless sunshine and the Swiss Alps covered in snow. But students of the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) do not even think about skipping classes. Because studying here is an expensive pleasure. Because negligence is punished regardless of the ranks and titles of parents. Because with a diploma from this school (if, of course, you get it) you will find a job in any case – after all, SHMS was founded on the basis of the first five-star hotel in Switzerland, Caux-Palace Hotel. It was there that the best traditions of world-famous Swiss hotel management were born. Today, students from more than 60 countries study at the school. And most importantly, it is simply interesting to study here. After all, the hotel business is one of the most promising areas of modern business.
This business starts with a smile
The father of a stylish and well-trained girl Lena is the owner of a coal business. Every day girl Lena gets up at 7:00. And goes either to classes or to practice.
– When I first arrived at school, on the very first day they gave me a bucket, a mop, a rag and sent me to wash the floors in our cafe, she recalls. – I tried to object, but they told me: the hotel business starts with a smile and cleanliness…
Students learn this rule immediately and for life. Therefore, at school everyone smiles broadly, cleans thoroughly and cooks deliciously. The students themselves maintain cleanliness and work culinary miracles. In the school restaurant, under the guidance of an experienced chef, boys and girls from Finland, France, Bulgaria, Russia, China, and Korea prepare magnificent dishes.
The education system here is as follows: you study at school for a week, and work for it for a week. You gain, so to speak, real experience in the hotel and restaurant business. As the head of studies at SHMS, Monsieur Florent Jorez, said, our students are distinguished by independence, perseverance, the ability to take responsibility and smile broadly in any situation. And this is valued more than money in the hotel business. Therefore, finding a six-month internship in Europe for our student is not a problem. The guys earn enough both for housing (usually they rent apartments or rooms from local residents) and for pocket money.
There are two official languages here – French and English. On weekends, most “pupils” spend time in the library. Firstly, because there are many assignments, and secondly – which greatly reassures anxious mothers – because both school buildings are located high in the mountains. To get, for example, to Montreux, you have to travel a long time by train or bus. And students have very little free time. So they work hard, study, compete, and earn points.
Exams at SHMS are very diverse – both strict, diploma exams, and informal ones. For example, International Day, which is held twice a year, is a kind of “semi-official” exam; all national student communities look forward to it. On this day, important guests come to the school – heads of diplomatic missions working in Switzerland, journalists and parents of students, as well as those who are just planning to enter the school, having connected their lives with the hotel business.
They prepare for the holiday responsibly. Students from each country organize buffets with national cuisine right in the school lobby, prepare performances – with costumes, songs and dances. Last time, the Koreans “rocked out” the best. The Norwegians were not inferior to them. The Indians had the tastiest buffet, and students from the USA mixed cocktails more nimbly than the others. The wife of the head of the Japanese diplomatic mission came in a national costume, the Spanish ambassador openly cheered for his students, claiming that their paella is the tastiest in the world…
Our excellent students go for internships to Germany, France, or find ways to practice in Switzerland. Although there are exceptions. Unlike her comrades who stayed to work in the hotels of kind-hearted Europe in the summer, honor student Ekaterina Tushishvili came to Moscow.
– Thanks to my resume, which stated that I study at the Swiss Hotel Management School, several prominent Moscow hotels immediately invited me to work, she says. – But it turned out that Russian hotel service and business are very far from what is taught in Swiss schools. They hired me at the Sheraton hotel at the front desk to work with clients. They immediately warned me, like, we don't pay for internships.
Well, I think, God bless them, the main thing for me is experience. When I tried to give each client the proper attention, the senior manager pulled me up: “Why are you taking so long!” As a result, I worked there for a month and a half and left without finishing my internship. Now Moscow hotels don't interest me…
Ekaterina did her next internship in a six-star (such things exist!) Swiss hotel. The management was pleased with her. They invited her to a permanent job and paid decently for the internship. But the honor student does not want to stay in Switzerland:
– I will go to work in Hong Kong or Taiwan. There the hotel business is developing at a frantic pace: you can gain experience and accumulate initial capital for your own business…
– What was the most difficult thing for you at school?
– When I first arrived, Russian students who were already studying here began to scare me, saying it was hard, they make you do the most difficult work, and not just study. Frightened, I didn't unpack my suitcases for three days, wondering whether to go back home. And then I decided: it's not for nothing that people come here from all over the world, surely this “school” will be useful to me in life.
– How are interns treated in Swiss hotels and restaurants?
– In different ways. There is no hazing, of course, but there was a certain disdain. I had to deal with it. In Lausanne, I did an internship at the Palace Hotel. I started as a dishwasher. The locals tried to edge me out a little. Fortunately, I know French well, and I explained: today I am doing my internship here, and tomorrow I will come to you as your boss, so let's live in friendship.
…By the end of the internship, our student was already working as a line manager.
Nothing personal
Future “sharks” of the hotel business live in school buildings. There are two of them, on opposite sides of Montreux, high in the mountains. The buildings are old. Rooms are ascetic, often without TVs. Living alone in a room is expensive; together it is cheaper. The school administration strictly monitors the morality and decency of students who are expensive in every sense. Therefore, educational and office romances are prohibited here under threat of expulsion. Friendship, of course, is not forbidden, but beyond joint gatherings in a cafe – absolutely not. The presence of boys in girls' rooms is excluded. Many parents, having sent their precious children to the Swiss, worry until they themselves visit the school. But having visited it, they remain satisfied: the language here is French, the discipline is German.
Although both children of wealthy parents and those who earned money for education through their own labor or took out a loan study at SHMS, social differences are erased within the school walls. Students attend classes in strict English suits. The uniform is sold in a small shop on the premises.
The school offers a wide variety of programs: you can study for just one year, or four, depending on the applicant's goals and means. Some, after completing one program, go to work, and after some time, having confirmed the correctness of their career choice or having saved up money for the next program, return to SHMS.