SINGAPORE – He wants young talent to fall in love with hospitality, and Singapore is pivotal to his quest.

Professor Markus Venzin, chief executive of Switzerland’s EHL Group which pioneered hospitality education, says students on its new EHL Campus (Singapore) profit from the island’s cross-cultural milieu and its digital forte.

“Students gain exposure to a fast-growing market, Asia, and learn about the single markets within Asia. So, they develop cross-cultural competencies,’’ says the 54-year-old.

Being cross-cultural is crucial in hospitality, which involves “co-creating with clients” the experience of feeling welcomed and valued at a hotel or restaurant.

“You can do this only if you are able to understand who you have in front of you,” he points out. “This is already difficult in the same culture. But if you do it in depth across cultures, this is extremely difficult.”

In Singapore, too, the 200 EHL students from across the world are exposed to innovations such as robotics that increasingly drive the global hospitality industry.

“Singapore is a hot spot for innovation, definitely for digital innovation,” he observes. “The Government is supporting start-ups and the development of new technology.” 

In that light, instead of flying professors from the main Lausanne campus of the EHL Hospitality Business School to the Singapore campus to teach digital innovation or cross-cultural competencies, EHL sends Singapore-based experts in the opposite direction to Lausanne.

“The Singapore campus is our main presence in Asia,” he adds. “We needed to understand this market. And we needed to learn from this market.”

Prof Venzin was speaking to The Straits Times during his recent visit to the two-year-old Singapore campus in Lady Hill Road, near Orchard Road.

The campus is a stylish makeover of the former Kinloss House, once a boarding school for children of colonial British soldiers.

The EHL students here take the same internationally recognised Bachelor of Science in International Hospitality that is offered in Lausanne. They begin with a preparatory year in Lausanne, followed by three years of study in Singapore.

EHL has a deep well of expertise as the world’s first hotel school, founded in 1893 as the Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL) in Lausanne.

Today, the Swiss school is a global group specialising in hospitality and business education on three campuses in Lausanne and Passugg, both in Switzerland, as well as in Singapore. 

It also offers advisory services and innovation resources for businesses and learning centres.

In Singapore, EHL is active in the higher-education landscape as well. 

EHL is building its SkillsFuture portfolio of short courses for adult learners, in sync with Singapore’s imperative of lifelong learning.

Short courses for executives include luxury brand management and designing hotel and restaurant concepts, which have attracted not only food and beverage teams but also interior designers, architects and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Says Ms Jenny Ang, managing director of EHL Group’s Singapore campus, who was at the interview: “During the pandemic, a lot of hotels were rethinking their concepts in the restaurants. It was a period of time that just accelerated the thinking about what’s next.”

Notably, too, EHL is co-developing a new technical diploma in hospitality and hotel management with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), at a time when the Government is focused on reskilling and upskilling the local workforce.

When EHL and ITE inked an agreement to create the diploma in 2022, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing spelt out the combined powers of the two institutions.

He said: “This technical diploma will provide a new pathway for those keen to pursue a career in the hospitality industry, and will leverage both the Swiss hospitality education excellence and the distinctive applied learning approach of ITE.”

Indeed, EHL has been ranked the world’s best hotel management school by QS World University Rankings for Hospitality and Leisure Management for the fifth year in a row. 

But the allure of hospitality may have dimmed during the pandemic. Hospitality workers have left the besieged industry in droves to seek new opportunities,

But Prof Venzin hopes young talent will prioritise a career in hospitality, where they will learn leadership early in life.

EHL can prepare them not only for a future in hospitality but also other human-centric sectors, he adds.

“Hospitality gives young people the possibility to experience leadership very early and to prove themselves as a manager, as a leader. That’s why the industry is attractive,” he says.

When they enrol at EHL, they benefit from experiential learning. They work in a kitchen, for instance, and create their own start-ups.

The school develops skills centred on human interaction such as customer experience, storytelling and communication.

EHL is also experimenting with new learning platforms such as augmented reality and gamification. Students are “immersed” in a hotel room, for instance.

When they graduate, their skills are valuable and transferable across sectors.

“You study business in a hospitality context. Hospitality is like a gigantic business case.

“And this will make you attractive in businesses that are human-centric.”

Private banking and luxury retail are among these human-centric domains, which are also sectors that contribute to the Singapore economy.

About 50 per cent of EHL graduates decide on non-hospitality career paths.

He paints a picture of EHL students as future CEOs with robust technical skills who care about people. “We are training great business leaders who are creative thinkers and have a can-do attitude,” he says.

“Our future CEOs in whatever domains are not just good with technical skills, but they’re also really gracious and charming people who will treat any business partner with humanity.”