Hospitality Students Interact with Hotel Business Community at HEC

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Apr 14, 2000 by Dickinson, Casey J

ITHACA-Students at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration took over the university's Statler Hotel from April 7 to 9-not to reenact 1970s protests, but to celebrate the 75th annual skill exhibition known as Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC). The weekend-long display coincides with the school's alumni gathering, and many students use the opportunity to network themselves into hotel-industry jobs.

More than 750 of the school's approximately 950 students showed off their hospitality skills to 300 alumni and guests, says Deniz Omurgonulsen, managing director of this year's event. Most of the remaining 200 students are away from Cornell's Ithaca campus on internships, she adds.

The hotel is closed to the public during the event. HEC guests pay $850 per room to cover the expenses for the weekend. The event also attracts corporate sponsorship, says Mark Adams, director of communications for the school.

The opportunity to interact with hotel executives gives many students a chance to focus their career aspirations before entering the work force, says Jeffrey Manno, publicity and education director for HEC. During the weekend, students often strike up conversations with guests regarding their business experiences. Some contacts lead to summer jobs or even careers.

Omurgonulsen knows well the employment potential a successful performance at HEC can bring. She landed a summer job after her first year of involvement with the event because of a contact made while serving a banquet. The next year, she met John Sharpe, then CEO of Four Seasons Hotels, while working at HEC.

Sharpe was so impressed by Omurgonulsen that he placed her in a summer job at Four Seasons' Ritz Carlton Hotel in Chicago. When she graduates in May, she begins her new career as assistant manager of the rooms division at Four Seasons' Pierre Hotel in New York.

Thanks to the personal contact at HEC, Omurgonulsen says, she's never had to submit a resume or sit through formal interview.

The tradition began in 1925 when Cornell Dean Howard Meek brought a group of students to New York City to try their hand at managing the Hotel Astor for a day. The experiment resulted in the students creating an annual event to demonstrate their skills for hotel-industry executives, many of them Cornell grads.

Since 1925, the event has grown from a dinner to an event-filled weekend that combines hospitality with business education. The students do all work, from preparation to dishwashing, says Omurgonulsen. In addition to more than 13 food and beverage events for the guests, HEC features several seminars on the event's second day.

This year, the seminars focused on two growing areas of the hotel business: electronic commerce and spas. Alumni shared their experience with using the Internet in business during a panel discussion that included representatives from hospitality-related ecommerce companies such as Priceline.com.

Alumni experts on spa management and development discussed how they were able to integrate spas into existing hotels. The participants in the spa panel shared their methods for increasing spa profitability through techniques they've teamed over their years of operation.

HEC begins on Friday with the school's alumni meeting and peaks Saturday night with a black-tie dinner. This year's dinner was themed "A Royal Affair to Remember" and featured smoked salmon terrine with caviar sauce. Other food events featured Middle Eastern cuisine and a cocktail party with a pre-Castro Cuban hospitality motif Friday night's dinner boasted Georgian cuisine. Guests expecting peanuts and grits were pleasantly surprised as they discovered "Tables of Tiblisi" was more Black Sea than black-eyed pea.

In order to help give future HEC participants a feel for the year 2000, students and alumni placed several articles in a time capsule that will be opened at HEC 125 in 50 years.

The 17 students that make up the event's board of directors spend 20 to 40 hours per week on HEC-related duties. Planning for the next HEC begins soon after the event concludes.