aeht newsletter of april 2010

Diekirch, April 2010 N°1/2010 1

Dear AEHT Members

Just like the Portuguese navigators 550 years ago, let’s set sail and head for a new territory situated on the banks of the Tagus estuary which the inhabitants of Lisbon called ‘Sea of Straw’ (Mar da palha)’ because of the yellowish reflections caused by the setting sun. Lisbon, Europe’s most westerly capital, will be our host for the 23rd AEHT Annual Conference from 5th to 10th October 2010. Lisbon and the surrounding region boast a remarkable heritage dating from Portugal’s 16th century golden age and financed by the wealth brought back from Portuguese colonies discovered in the 15th century during the many Portuguese voyages of discovery; these were organised not only to promote the Catholic faith and to counter Moorish conquests and influence, but also to put a stop to the commercial superiority of the Arabs and Venetians.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos – the monument built in Belém in 1960 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator,

the Portuguese king who instigated the first expeditions. The king’s statue stands at the prow.

Thus in 1460 the Portuguese discovered Guinea, the first of their five African colonies, thereby securing their monopoly of African trade, especially of gold, ivory, slaves and malagueta (an African substitute for pepper). In 1487 Bartolomeu Dias reached the shore of present-day Angola, then the most southerly lands of Africa, returning via the Cape of Good Hope. In 1497 Vasco de Gama discovered the route to the Indies, thus putting a stop to Venice’s Mediterranean monopoly of the spice trade and undermining the Arabs’ commercial interests in this domain. Following Vasco de Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral, Francisco d’Almeida and Afonso d’Albuquerque established settlements to support the spice trade in Zanzibar, Calicut and Malacca. It was by chance that Alvares Cabral, who had set off with his squadron of 13 ships and 1500 men to intimidate the Arabs, discovered Brazil while avoiding the calm waters of

the Gulf of Guinea. After the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the Pope was called upon to adjudicate, and in 1493 divided the world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the Papal Bull known as ‘Inter Coetera’ which became the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The Portuguese obtained Brazil and Africa, while the Spaniards were awarded the rest of America west of Brazil. Not only was Lisbon’s and Portugal’s wealth guaranteed for the next century, but also our cultures and our culinary habits would be greatly altered as a result.

The Executive Board at the Lisbon Hotel School on March 6th

For many of our students the AEHT Annual Conference is an important stage in their careers, giving them the opportunity to show off their vital competences, their skills and their professional knowledge, as well as developing their contacts with the rest of the world. This event will enable them to discover a new educational and professional world, an exceptional multinational environment, a new sociocultural context, a new gastronomy and new friendships. However, so that this experience can become an unqualified success, and so that no student should be excluded from the competitions, the Competitions Committee has just drawn up a set of rules which must be observed to the letter:

1. Every student must have the required language level for the chosen contest, as defined by the Council of Europe’s framework of reference for languages. The teacher in charge must confirm this level when he or she registers the student. If this rule is not observed, the candidate will


be excluded from the contest. 2. No school may register more than one

student per contest. The online registration system will automatically refuse a second registration.

3. No student may participate more than once in an Annual Conference. The organisers will carry out checks to prevent this.

4. The online registration system will automatically limit the number of places per country available in the competitions to 25% of the allocated places, except for the management competition where this quota will be 50%. Similarly, the organising country may allocate to itself any places which remain unfilled by the registration dead-line, thus possibly exceeding the quota.

5. The accompanying teachers will be obliged to indicate when they register which subject(s) they teach so that they can be members of the judging panels, thus enabling all teachers to take part in at least one excursion.

This 23rd Annual Conference is being organised by the Directorate of the department for school coordi-nation and management of the ‘Turismo de Portugal I.P.’ agency together with the Lisbon hotel school. The ‘Turismo de Portugal I.P.’ agency is aligned to the Ministry for Economy, Innovation and Develop-ment, and is the national/central tourism authority responsible for the promotion, improvement and sus-tainable development of tourism activity in Portugal. 16 Hotel and Tourism Schools, located throughout Portugal, are answerable to the Agency - and many of them are involved in organising the Conference.

The Lisbon hotel school has occupied this

1927 building since 2009 Head Office of ‘Turismo de

Portugal I.P’

The programme has not changed much since the preliminary version was presented to the General Assembly in Dubrovnik. Nine competitions will be offered: Culinary Arts competition

Cocktail Bar competition Competition involving the presentation of a

tourism destination (for students in initial training) and Tourism Management competition (for Higher Education students)

Flambé competition Reception competition Management competition Pastry competition Restaurant service competition Wine service competition.

All the competitions will take place at the Marriott Hotel, Avenidas dos Combatentes 45, PT-1600-042 Lisbon, except for the culinary arts and pastry con-tests which will be held at the Lisbon hotel school. Since the ‘carnation revolution’ in 1974, and espe-cially since it joined the European Union in 1986, Lisbon has undergone remarkable development. Long gone are the dark days of the 46-year Salazar dicta-torship, during which time the Portuguese economy was in ruins. We will be hosted by a brand-new city which enjoys a standard of living and infrastructures which compare well with those of other Eastern European capitals. The facilities to be used during the Conference bear ample witness to this.

Marriott Hotel, Lisbon The New York Conference and Banqueting Hall

Auditorium for wine studies Two of the Lisbon Hotel School’s many kitchens


Numerous excursions lasting two or three hours will be organised in Lisbon itself, and three others will take us outside the city, as follows:

1. Óbidos, a fortified town north of Lisbon, and one of the favourite tourist attractions because of the well-preserved ramparts which date from the Moorish occupation and which were partially restored in the 12th, 13th and 16th centuries. A keep and the castle’s high towers occupy the northern part of the town, which is at a higher elevation. From the covered way you will enjoy a splendid view over the town and its white painted houses picked out in blue and yellow.

2. Évora, a fortress city dating from the Portuguese golden age, located around a hundred kilometres east of Lisbon. It is rich in history, having kept from its eventful past numerous medieval and renaissance palaces - the town is amazing museum of Portuguese architecture. For a long time the town was the seat of the royal residence, mostly during the reigns of the Portuguese monarchs in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially that of John II (nicknamed ‘the Perfect Prince’, meaning ‘the tyrant’ with reference to the work of the Florentine Machiavelli, because he brought the power of the nobility into his own hands and defended the ordinary citizens against the nobility’s extortionate behaviour). Other monarchs to reside in Évora were Manuel 1st (the Great or the Wealthy) who continued to support Portuguese voyages of discovery and commercial monopolies, as well as John 3rd (the Pious). The town’s prestige reached its apogee in the 16th century when it was elevated to the rank of Ecclesiastical Metropolis. The town’s historic centre was given UNESCO World Heritage classification in 1986.

3. Fátima, one of the main sanctuaries of the cult of the Virgin Mary. This little Portuguese town is part of the city of Ourém in the Santarém district, and became famous in 1917 when three young shepherds claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary, alone or in the presence of thousands of faithful, on six occasions on the 13th of each month from May to October 1917, except on August 19th when the three local children had been put in prison by the local administrator. Two of the children died very young and were beatified by Pope John Paul 2nd in 1989. Lucie Dos Santos took her vows and from 1946 resided in the Carmelite convent in Coimbra where she died in 2005 aged 97, leaving us her version of the Apparitions of the Virgin.

Some practical information about the 2010 Conference will soon be available on the organisers’ website at www.aehtlisboa2010.eu (also accessible via a link from www.aeht.eu).

The River Tagus (Tejo) is over 1000 kms long and rises near to Madrid. View from

the Castelo de São Jorge

The ‘Eléctrico’, the hundred-year-old tram

which trundles along the narrow streets of Old Lisbon

Delegates will register online in the same way as in 2010. However, the registration software has been improved to take account of the rules set out in the boxed text at the beginning of this newsletter. The electronic registration form and the competition documents are in the process of being finalised, and will shortly be available from download on the same website.

In order to register, you will first of all have to create your own account by choosing your own user-name and password. After registering, you will receive an e-mail giving you the link which will enable you to activate your account and to access the registration form. A demonstration of the registration process is available on the website. The AEHT code, which identifies the registering school, is the unique link between the registration software and the AEHT’s database. For security reasons (and to avoid duplicate registrations) the programme will accept only one contact person (only one account) per school. It is vital that when schools complete the pre-registration process, they register students – even fictitious ones – for the competitions, in order to guarantee their places. Changes can be made subsequently online. Once you have registered you can download the invoice proforma which appears in the margin of the same web page. After payment, the paper version of the invoice will be sent to you by post or will be handed to you at the Conference.

The organisers will lay on free transfers between the Marriott hotel, where all the participants will be staying, and Lisbon airport and rail station, where students and teachers from the Lisbon hotel school or from partner schools will greet you with plaques bearing the AEHT insignia. For the return journey the transfer dates and times will be posted in the foyer of the Marriott hotel.

The initially announced rates of the conference fees - €580 per student (sharing a double or three-bedded room) and €720 per teacher – all increasing by 20%


after June 15th - were considered to be too expensive and are currently being renegotiated. These fees include all activities on the programme. The registration deadline is September 25th 2010 – and we hope to see very many of you in Lisbon.

At the beginning of March the Executive Board, the Presidium, the Council of Elders and Competitions Committee enjoyed a brief stay in Lisbon, but a stay that was rich in emotions. The intention is that the spring meeting should allow the delegates to see for themselves how preparations for the Annual Conference are advancing. Because of an extremely full agenda, the Presidium was able to debate matters relating to the management and administration of the AEHT, such as the forthcoming transfer of the AEHT’s financial book-keeping to Bad Ischl and the opening of a new bank account in Austria for the receipt of subscriptions as from 2010. It was clearly stated that the AEHT Head Office would remain in Luxembourg, and would continue to receive a subsidy from the Luxembourg Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. Moreover Klaus Enengl, Louis Robert and Adolf Steindl had submitted an application for EU funding under the ‘Youth in Action’ programme, requesting from the European Commission the means to finance new activities, notably the AEHT’s Youth Parliament. At the time of the meeting we were still awaiting the European Commission’s response to our application – and the rejection of the application reached the AEHT Head Office on March 31st. The applications for project funding are assessed against qualitative criteria (objectives of the programme, geographic impact, quality, impact and cascading potential of the proposed activities, involvement of young people in organising the activities) as well as against quantitative criteria (scheduled activities, groups of activities involved, subjects covered, groups of young people – especially those with limited resources – and the number of countries involved). Our application obtained only 58.9 marks out of 100, whereas only those awarded 73.5 and above can expect to receive any subsidy from the European Union. The Executive Agency for Education, Media and Culture emphasises that only a third of the applications (48 out of 148) were selected because of a limited budget. The Presidium intends to refine its application and to resubmit it at the end of 2010.

At the meeting we also finalised the arrangements for the AEHT Youth Parliament, and these arrangements were also presented to the subsequent Executive Board meeting. The first session of the parliament will be aimed at students aged 18 and above, and will take place in Bad Ischl from 26th to 31st October 2010. We hope that 70 students will attend, to present and

debate subjects of Europe-wide interest, to take part in seminars, guided tours and social, cultural and sporting activities. The number of places available to each country depends on the number of member schools in that country, and will be announced in the official invitation to be sent out by the organisers after Easter. The application deadline will be in June. Participants must be fluent in at least one of the AEHT’s two official languages. This parliament will be based on the Model United Nations used for the plenary sessions of the UN’s youth parliament.

Other interesting subjects were discussed at the Executive Board meeting on March 6th. Detailed minutes of the meeting may be consulted on our website under the ‘Meetings and Reports’ rubric.

The Executive Board hard at work

During our stay in Lisbon we were privileged to hold our meetings and to have lunch at the Lisbon hotel school. During our guided tour on Friday afternoon we could see for ourselves the highly successful renovation of a 1927 building. All the classrooms and practical rooms were very well equipped and the staff were extremely friendly and competent. We found the students very disciplined and highly motivated, always ready to ‘muck in’.

Sea bass in a pastry case with sauted vegetables

‘D. Maria’ Dessert The kitchen and restaurant brigades from the Estoril hotel school


Not only at the Lisbon and Estoril hotel schools but also at the Marriott hotel and the five-star Olissippo Lapa Palace, we experienced some unforgettable gastronomic moments, during which we savoured a number of typical Portuguese dishes.

The Lisbon Hotel School is fast becoming a centre of excellence

On Saturday afternoon the national representatives were finally able to set off to explore the old part of the city of Lisbon, an amazing treasure of monuments and tourist attractions. We will describe below just the ones we were able to visit or admire. The sun had finally swept away the rain of the previous two days, allowing us to walk from the Santa Maria Maior Cathedral to the old Alfama district, one of the few parts of the city to have survived the 1755 earthquake, which was followed by a devastating tsunami and a terrible fire. We walked through St George’s castle, sitting atop the historic centre’s highest hill and affording the visitors one of the finest views over the city and the Tagus estuary.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Maior dating from 1150 (and subsequently greatly modified) and the famous 1732 Aguas Livres

(‘free waters’) Aqueduct which survived the 1755 earthquake

The reconstruction of the lower town which had been completely devastated was directed by the energetic Marquis of Pombal and carried out according to antiseismic – earthquake-proof – norms using appropriate materials. ‘Stricter’ blocks of flats emerged to replace the devastated medieval houses in the Baixa and Chiado districts, built along streets which now intersect at right angles. Further on arises the Belém Tower, the emblem of the city, and the extraordinary 16th century Hieronymite

monastery, a UNESCO world heritage site which houses among other things the tombs of the great explorers. All this time spent in Lisbon convinced us that the next Annual Conference is being organised by a well coordinated team consisting of officers from the Turismo de Portugal agency as well as directors and teachers from several Portuguese hotel schools. We can be sure that this Conference will be a fine demonstration of amazing national cooperation. We should like to take this opportunity to thank all those we met for taking up the challenge of organising this conference a year earlier than scheduled.

Klaus Enengl thanking Nuno Santos, Paulo Revés, Clara Freitas and Alexandra Pereira

We should also like to pay tribute to our dear Hungarian National Representative and former Vice-President, Akos Sasvari from the Giorgio Perlasca school in Budapest, who has worked hard for the AEHT, especially in organising events (a total of seven) and in recruiting members in Eastern European countries. Moreover his school was the first from Eastern Europe to become a member of our Association in 1992. As he himself put it so well recently, ‘In 1990 when I became director of my school, Hungarian hotel and tourism education had until then been cut off by the iron curtain and was in urgent need of new ideas and experiences from Western European countries. After a long search we discovered the AEHT and quickly made contact with them. We were lucky that the Association happened to be in the process of opening up membership to former communist countries - it saw the importance of this well before the politicians’. Akos Sasvari will retire from his post at the end of this academic year, and we wish him well for his retirement.

Happy retirement Akos!


On March 25th and 26th the ‘P.Artusi’ Vocational Institute for Hotel Studies, located in the Province of Ravenna, together with the ‘Terre di Faenza’ promotion company, ran its 18th international culinary arts contest entitled ‘Il Piatto Verde’ (the Green Plate). The specific theme for this year was ‘Energy from Herbs’

The contest was aimed at students in their third year of culinary arts programmes in European hotel schools. The event attracted participants from 12 schools, eight Italian schools and four from outside Italy, including nine AEHT member schools. The four countries represented were the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany and Italy.

The event aimed to encourage the study of the use of aromatic herbs and to encourage students’ professional confidence, while facilitating meetings between students and teachers from different regions and from different sociocultural backgrounds, as well as the exchange of knowledge, experience and working methods.

This year all the winners called to the platform to receive prizes were Italians:

The First Prize was awarded to Mattia Pesarin from the ISS ‘P. Artusi’ in Forlimpopoli for his ‘Tower of green asparagus with Parmesan mousse, squacquerone (an Italian cream cheese) and wild spinach with a pesto of dried tomatoes, wild garlic oil and lovage. The Second Prize was won by Matteo Dimiziani from the IIS ‘V. Gioberti’ in Rome for his ‘Pear Delight with a squacquerone and mint heart on a redcurrant coulis.

In Third Place came Antonio Meneghin from the IPSSAR ‘D. Dolomieu’ in Longarone (BL) for his Yoghurt with herbs and sweetmeats’.

Teacher Placements in Hotels of the ACCOR Group

Antonina Bolshakova from Petrovsky College in St Petersburg

carried out her placement in the Ibis, Frankfurt City Messe

Olga Volodina from Petrovsky College (2nd from the right, rear)

together with the housekeeping staff of the Novotel Amsterdam City

Each year the AEHT, in close collaboration with the ACCOR Group, organises professional placements for teachers. What is it about? Firstly Stéphanie Lausecker, an assistant in the ACCOR Hotels Human Resources Directorate, sends out a letter to hotels of the group, asking them to host teachers from AEHT member schools for professional placements lasting one or two weeks. A number of hotels agree to participate in the scheme.

These placements can take place in one of the following departments: Reception/Rooms Division; Housekeeping and Room Service; F&B; Restaurant; and Group Services/Commercial Relations. This information is available in a document published at www.zshg.waw.ids.pl/aeht_accor_gl.html, and this site is also accessible via a link from the AEHT’s website. Thus an initial list of placement offers was published at the beginning of March by our ACCOR placements organiser, Magdalena Waglowska-Krzciuk from the Warsaw Hotel School: Zespół Szkół Hotelarsko-Turystyczno-Gastronomicznych Nr 1 ul. Krasnołęcka 3, PL-00-734 Warsaw Fax: (48) 22 840 48 97 - E-mail: [email protected] .

Anna Szałek, a teacher at the Warsaw hotel school ’Zespół Szkół Hotelarsko-Turystyczno-Gastronomicznych Nr 1’, on placement in 2007

at the Ibis hotel London Wembley

A teacher who wishes to take part in such a placement (as long as the selected placement is still available) should download the application pack


from the above-mentioned website; the completed and signed documents should then be sent as soon as possible, together with a letter of application and official authorisation, to Magdalena Waglowska-Krzciuk. For placements in Germany or Austria, applications should be submitted in English. Mrs Waglowska-Krzciuk will let you know as quickly as possible whether you have been accepted for the requested placement. At the end of the placement, participants should send to Magdalena Waglowska-Krzciuk the evaluation sheet together with the expenses claim including the relevant receipts. We would welcome any photos and articles, which may be published in our Newsletter. Once the documents have been checked, the AEHT Head Office will make the necessary reimbursement, which is a maximum per participant of €200, from which we deduct an administrative charge of €80. The following countries are exempt from this administrative charge: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia and the Ukraine. The arrangements offered by the ACCOR group are still the same: free lodging and all meals taken in the staff canteen

Gregor Silc from the Bled Hotel School, Slovenia, on placement in 2009 at the Ibis Hotel in Zurich

In view of the limited number of places available in 2010, we hope that they will all be taken. Don’t hesitate, apply now!

Just a reminder that to find the cheapest airfares for a given destination, you can go to www.momando.com. To find out which low-cost airlines fly to this destination, use the search engine provided by www.flylc.com.

THIS AND THAT News from AEHT Members

1. Switzerland – the birthplace of tourism and a country which boasts many institutions teaching

hospitality and tourism studies

Marc-Etienne Gartmann, the AEHT’s Swiss National Representative, kindly agreed to be inter-viewed by Louis Robert and Nadine Schintgen, who happened to be travelling in Switzerland. Marc-Etienne Gartmann is also the President of the Swiss Hotel Schools Association (Association suisse des Ecoles hôtelières, ASEH) and Vice-President of the Swiss Tourism and Hospitality School (SSTH) and Director of the Professional School for Applied Sciences in Chur, Switzerland’s oldest city.

Arosa – a famous ski resort which owes its success to its

policies of sustainable development; it is located in the

mountains above the Passugg/Chur Campus

Marc Gartmann – our correspondent in Switzerland

How did the SSTH come into being? The school was founded as a result of a private initiative. In 1966 Dr Markus Christoffel set up a school for hotel administration to meet the region’s needs for hotel secretaries. Three years later higher level programmes were added, as well as tourism courses in 1979.

How has it come about that your school has been a leader, both nationally and internationally, over the last 40 or so years? Switzerland has an outstanding worldwide reputation as the birthplace of tourism and as a country that excels at education. Many famous international figures in the fields of economics and politics have carried out a part of their training here. Many young people come to study hospitality here because of this international


reputation for excellence which is explained both by a high quality professional training with a practical orientation, and also by the good reputation of the Lausanne hotel school, which has been in existence for more than a hundred years.

What was the determining factor during your youth which led you to take up your present role of Vice-President of the SSTH and of Director of the College of Applied Science? I have always been interested in the international context, and in addition I grew up in a tourist area, Arosa, close to Chur, where I was in constant contact with hoteliers. However, my studies were in a completely different field – psychology, ethnology and Germanic philology. After that I worked in humanitarian projects before working for schools, which I’ve now been doing for more than 20 years. For the last 11 years I’ve been working for the SSTH school, which I joined as a teacher. I began there as director of a professional training department (‘berufsbildende Schulabteilung’) in Chur and for the last six years I’ve been the director of the Professional HE Institution. Before coming to Chur I had already been director of a school, and I moved from being director of an ordinary school to being director of a Professional HE Institution. The fact that we take on both local and international students makes my job particularly fascinating and interesting. At present I do not have time to teach classes, but I run seminars on techniques for writing final-year dissertations and on presentation skills etc.

How does it come about that the SSTH occupies a spa hotel? At first we were in a hotel in Chur which did not belong to us and in which we had rented several rooms. When the hotel in Passugg became available, we had the idea of teaching hotel studies in a hotel. Furthermore we were short of space in our hall of residence at the time, and the Passugg campus provided us with enough space both for the school and for the hall of residence. Today the building belongs to a joint-stock company; until last year the main shareholder was the late Mr Stefan Schörghuber, the owner of the ArabellaSheraton hotels in Germany. And now his wife has taken over as managing director of the company.

What training programmes are offered at the SSTH? Nowadays the institution is home to five different schools, including two vocational schools, one specialising in hospitality, the other in tourism, accepting students aged between 16 and 19. The College of Applied Science is a post-secondary (but non-university) vocational school, which accepts only students who already have professional experience or

professional training (‘Berufsbildung’), usually in the hotel sector, or who already have their baccalaureate. There are two departments, one in which teaching takes place in German, the other in which classes are taught in English.

High-quality teaching provided in a high-quality environment

However, a proportion of the students following initial vocational training intend to become non-specialised employees in the hotel sector. They learn to work in food preparation, in restaurant service, housekeeping and reception. In the Grisons canton a number of small hotel business in fact need multi-skilled staff who are able to operate in all the departments. Moreover we offer a training programme for Tourism Agents (‘Tourismuskaufmann’) intended for students who want to work later on in a travel agency or in a tourist office. Here on the Passugg campus we train future Hoteliers and Restaurateurs to HF level (Höhere Fachschule). The ES conference is currently trying to have this degree changed into a Bachelor in Hospitality. It is a tertiary-level programme at level 5b according to the ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education, validated by UNESCO in 1997), a non-university qualification at a higher vocational level.

Beat Wicki – Managing Director of the SSTH with Louis Robert and Marc-Etienne Gartmann

(from left to right)

Marc-Etienne Gartmann with his interviewers

Following the adoption of the new law on vocational training in Swiss HE Institutions, the schools’ courses are now based on a specific training programme for each professional branch. For the hotelier/restaurateur branch the Study Framework Plan has been drawn up by


the training providers and by organisations representing the world of work, and was introduced in October 2008. The new feature of this is that from now on the training is based on the competences which a hotelier must posses. All Swiss HE hotel and restaurant schools must follow the plan and adapt or create their curricula according to it. This Study Framework Plan was validated in March 2009 by the OFFT (Office fédéral de la formation professionnelle et de la technologie – Federal Office for Professional Training and Technology) and the SSTH in Chur was the first Swiss school to thus adapt its training programme, which was lodged with the OFFT in June 2009. For a period of three years this programme will be tested out and monitored by OFFT experts. If all goes well, we will obtain a new accreditation after this pilot phase.

This programme will prepare students for positions in ‘middle management’ and for this reasons we chose to provide a complete training programme starting from basics. In other words every student must follow a training course in cooking, service, etc., in order to learn how those departments operate and to be able to instruct and guide others. It is only in the third year (the first university cycle) that they will begin to learn about hotel management, marketing, finance, intercultural competences etc.

Will you one day offer a Bachelor degree (three years after A-level) in Chur? Since we are a higher vocational school of non-university level, we are not allowed to offer Bachelor-level training programmes; this privilege is exclusively reserved for prestigious Higher Education institutes. Despite this restriction, we do have an ‘In-house-Bachelor’, which we run in collaboration with Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh (Scotland). To obtain this Bachelor, the students just have to complete an additional study year in our school or in Edinburgh and to pass their exams. We also have an agreement with the University of Delaware, but in this case the students have to relocate to the United States in order to obtain their Bachelor.

Professionally speaking, what achievement are you particularly proud of today? The adaptation of the Study Framework Plans carried out over recent years, and the international dimension which we have acquired here in Chur – both of these achievements are remarkable. At present 220 students are enrolled at our institution, and there are more than 40 different nationalities working side by side. Our hall of residence, with 130 bedrooms and 176 beds, is full.

More than 40 nationalities are represented at the SSTH

Since March 2006 you have also been president of the ASEH. How did you come to take on this role? At the time of the elections I had been on the Executive Board for a year. My predecessor was not eligible to stand again because he had already completed two mandates. The new president needed to be familiar with both Swiss and foreign schools, and the fact that the SSTH is the only member school involved in both national and international activities was certainly a factor in my election. I was very pleased with the outcome, because it is very interesting to interact with other schools rather than staying cloistered in one’s own school.

What are the ASEH’s objectives, and what are its differences and similarities with the AEHT? The main objective, and the reason for the ASEH’s creation, was the quality control of its member schools. In Switzerland anyone can quite easily open their own school. For this reason, some of them run shady businesses, mostly recruiting their students from abroad without offering good-quality training. This practice has a detrimental effect on the reputation of all Swiss schools. So we have set out 120 quality criteria which a school has to fulfil before joining the ASEH. All these schools are inspected every four years. Thus there is an ongoing process to ensure a certain standard.

These quality criteria are of three different types: academic, professional and infrastructural. Please could you elaborate a little? There are several systems for the quality control of the academic aspects, e.g. the NEASC system (New England Association of Schools and Colleges) which are mainly international quality label systems. At national level such systems do not exist, especially not for the hotel schools with HE programmes. We have noticed that in the case of new schools, usually the shortcomings are in the area of the infrastructure. Some schools set up their operation in former hotels without making the necessary alterations, whereas they need to modify the kitchen and bedrooms to enable them to be used for educational purposes.


For school buildings and classrooms, does Switzerland have standards which have to be followed? There are only a few norms to be observed, including the minimum surface area of a classroom which is two square metres per student. The Swiss federation does not carry out checks on this, and when there is a serious accident, the owner usually shuts up shop and disappears. Problems also arise from the fact that education is not centralised, but is governed at the level of the canton. Thus Switzerland has 26 different education systems, and it is difficult to have an overall view of them. Some cantons carry out stringent checks, while others are rather laid back.

Are all the Swiss hotel schools offering HE programmes members of the ASEH? The private hotel schools of Lausanne and les Roches-Glion ceased to be members when they received accreditation as specialised HE institutes (universities). The Roches-Glion school belongs to the American Laureate group, a conglomerate of 50 universities across the world. Since their accreditation these two schools have ceased to be active on the national scene and operate internationally. The Roche-Glion school now uses the American network and no longer applies the ASEH’s quality criteria. Theses schools no longer trade on the excellence of Swiss education, but have become commercially-orientated institutions.

So what becomes of specialism such as culinary arts and food service, etc? We can assume that sooner or later these schools will no longer offer teaching in these areas.

In Europe and everywhere else, fewer and fewer people are given basic professional training, and more and more are trained as managers. Do we really need so many managers? When people study at university they acquire theoretical knowledge, but they are no longer employable in practical situations. My view is that hotels need fewer people with masters degrees, and that too many people are overqualified while still unable to carry out the most basic of practical tasks. Consequently, university graduates are obliged to add practical placements to their long university courses, so that they can really know how the hospitality industry works. For this reason we decided to adopt a different approach and first of all to train our students in the practical tasks before providing them with middle management training.

« Each graduate must be able to

carry out the most basic of practical tasks »

Students with the traditional baccalaureate who want to enrol for a Higher Education programme at a hotel school do not need to catch up on the lower-level courses, but they have to have worked for a year in the hospitality profession. Their programme includes two years of taught courses followed by a year’s professional placement. Obliging the students to work for a year in the hotel profession before they enrol gives them the opportunity of finding out, before they begin their studies, whether the profession really is for them.

In terms of Bologna classification, the ‘diploma for hoteliers and restaurateurs’ counts as ISCED level 5b (UNESCO’s International Standard Classification of Education) - level 5a corresponds to the same level but involves considerably more practical work. Once they have been awarded this qualification students can continue their studies on a BA or MA programme. An ‘Executive Master’ can be undertaken only after five years of professional practice in a managerial role, while our students may be awarded a BA after completing one additional year. It is at this point that academic pathways are added.

Which schools are currently members of the ASEH? They are exclusively Higher Education institutions recognised by the Swiss Confederation. There are twelve of them:

- Schweizerische Hotelfachschule Luzern - Ecole hôtelière de Genève ‘ ES ‘ - Belvoirpark Hotelfachschule Zürich – HF - Hotelfachschule Thun - HIM - Hotel Institute Montreux - Institut hôtelier ‘César Ritz’, Le Bouveret - SSTH - Swiss School of Tourism and

Hospitality, Chur - SHMS – Swiss Hotel Management School,

Caux/Montreux - University Centre ‘César Ritz’, Brig-Glis


- DCT University Center, Hospitality Leadership & European Culinary Arts, Vitznau

- IHTTI, School of Hotel Management, Neuchâtel

- Scuola superiore alberghiere e del Turismo, Bellinzona

The schools in Caux/Leysin, Neufchâtel and Montreux belong to the same group. They provide relatively traditional professional training, and we need more of this. We also need more trained department heads and restaurant managers. Following their decision to make a considerable reduction in the numbers of their partnerships, the Swish Hoteliers Association left the ASEH. On the other hand our membership includes two other professional associations: ‘GastroSuisse’ and the ‘Hotel & Gastro Union’, which represent the employers and the employees respectively. They have a consultative role and are represented on our Board. Why is the Lausanne hotel school not a member of the ASEH? This school has just been granted the status of ‘specialist higher education institution’ and is thus the only specialised HE establishment or university in the field of hospitality studies in the whole of Switzerland. This school therefore enjoys a different status from that of the ASEH member schools.

Do all the member schools have the same curriculum? Six of them, all recognised Higher Education institutions - Geneva, Thun, Lucerne, Zurich, Chur et Bellinzona – provide a curriculum agreed by the professional associations and by the Swiss Federal Office for Professional Training and Technology, (OFFT). For the most part the curriculum at the other schools is based on programmes of foreign universities: they teach in English and usually have accreditation from NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges) or work directly with universities – as is the case with the Chur/Passugg school. For its curriculum taught in German, our school follows the OFFT regulations, whereas its English-taught programme closely follows those of foreign universities. The two programmes are similar, but there are areas of difference: for example in the German-taught programme we teach mostly Swiss law, while in the English-taught programme it is essentially international law that is taught. The German-taught programme is subsidized by the state, and a Swiss or foreign student pays tuition fees of only 1500 Swiss francs per semester, while the English-taught programme of study costs 12,500 Swiss francs per semester both for Swiss and for foreign students.

In the ASEH’s annual report it is pointed out that the trainees from the 12 member schools carried out in 2008 the equivalent in working hours of 1000 full-time posts. An outsider might suppose that the employers’ association is represented in the ASEH only in order to have access to a cheap and highly qualified work-force. What is the situation here? There are some hotel chains, mostly the large chains, which certainly see things this way. However, these businesses do have an obligation to provide training for the placement students. Their role in this respect is checked by the schools, but it is still a delicate matter. It is not always useful to carry out a year-long placement in a five-star hotel where the students take on the relevant role only at the end of their placement. In our school we recommend more productive placements, in which the management trainees spend periods of five weeks in each of the departments, five weeks in the kitchen, then five weeks in food service, then with F&B control and finally at reception and in marketing. Thus at the end of their placements the students will have learnt about every aspect of the business. Usually the professional placement takes place over one uninterrupted period, but it may be divided into two placement periods or take place in two difference businesses.

The professional placement – an important component of the programme

of study at the SSTH

Are placement students paid in Switzerland? The legal minimum rate of pay for placement students is 2,100 Swiss francs per month, from which the cost of board and lodging is deducted – this might be as much as 900 Swiss francs per month. In Switzerland the minimum monthly salary for an unqualified worker – such as a washer-up – is the equivalent of 3,400 Swiss francs.

It is a shame that only two ASEH schools are represented in the AEHT. Is it not in their interest to have contacts with other European schools? These HE establishments are likely to show more interest following the creation of the HE group within the AEHT. I should point out that these are not secondary schools like those in Italy. Students enrol at 22, and finish their studies when they are 25 or 26 years old. The situation is similar to that of the German schools.


What would make the AEHT more attractive to them? It would certainly be interesting to offer more practical tasks in our competitions. What do you think? We could ask them to work with case studies, for example drawing up a business plan or carrying out a business game, arranging the tables for a banquet, setting up purchase orders, or dealing with problems that require marketing skills, for example creating a product and designing the necessary marketing campaign.

You have offered to host the AEHT’s Higher Education group in Chur. How will this work? The programme will be drawn up by AEHT officers. I plan to give a presentation of the blueprint of the curriculum for Swiss HE institutions offering hospitality programmes together with the competences which we need to teach. I will also speak about how this blueprint will be implemented in our programme of studies. We will also be very interested in exchanging views with representatives of the other participating countries. The seminar is intended for directors and teachers rather than for students.

The dates of the seminar coincide with the ‘Food Festival’, the culmination of a year-long project carried out by Swiss and foreign students who are following the management strand. During their year-long course of study they have one afternoon per week to organise this festival, to take place on May 1st for a period of about six hours; it will attract around 2000 guests, and the students are responsible for every aspect of it: publicity (on the radio, through brochures, etc), the shuttle bus which carries visitors every 15 minutes between Chur and the Passugg campus, etc. Enormous quantities of ingredients will be used to prepare the food, and a budget of around 100,000 Swiss francs is needed (just covering the costs). Entrance to the festival costs 30 Swiss francs, and dishes are free at most of the food stands. You are warmly invited to register for the Higher Education seminar which will take place on April 30th and May 1st this year.

2. News from our Competition Winners

At the suggestion of Mary Owens, a former AEHT Vice-President, we have created this section to include reports from competition winners on how the AEHT experience has influenced their personal and professional development, and the careers which may have opened up to them following their performances at the Annual Conferences

- News from Martins Kupecs

Martins Kupecs, a graduate of the ‘Riga Food Producers Vocational School’, won the special pastry prize for his individual performance at the Killarney Annual Conference in 2006. He is 24 years old and currently works in a pastry shop in Riga, the capital of Latvia. 1. In 2006, you won the special pastry prize for your

individual performance at the AEHT Annual Conference in Killarney. How did you prepare for this competition? What are your most vivid memories of this event? Did winning this contest have an effect on your professional and personal life and on your personality?

I worked very hard to prepare for that contest. It was a very fruitful experience for me. I believe that competitions such as this motivate students to train seriously and enable them to perfect their skills. Winning this prize made me realize that you can achieve a lot of things in life, but that you have to believe in yourself and throw yourself into the task. It’s a shame that I am no longer in touch with the other competitors, but I would like to get in touch with them just to talk about our experiences and to see how they are and what they are doing five years on.

Best individual performance in the pastry competition

Hard at work during the contest

2. What is your view today of the AEHT and its Annual Conference? Did you feel the European spirit at the Killarney Conference? Did this experience open up new horizons for you? Did it encourage you to pursue training opportunities abroad?

The main advantage of the AEHT and its Annual Conference is that it gives personal and professional enrichment to the students. This type of competition enables students to demonstrate their ideas to a large public, to improvise and to produce creations like real artists. However, this experience did not have any direct effect in opening up new professional horizons for me .


3. Have you won any other medals at international competitions?

In 2008 I competed in the ‘COPPA EUROPA di PASTICERIA’ – the European pastry trophy in Rome – in which ten countries were represented; there I won third place.

The complete Latvian team at the European Pastry Championship in Rome in 2008

Martins Kupecs with some of his creations

4. What are your plans for the future? This year I’ve registered for a number of workshops which will certainly be important for my continuing professional development. It will definitely help me in achieving my long-term goal of one day opening my own pastry shop. My only dream is to be able to spend my whole life doing this job which I adore.

Johnny Carroll (IRL), a member of the judging panel and former teacher at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, congratulates

Martins Kupecs

5. What are the most important qualities for a chef? What recommendations and advice would you give to aspiring pastry chefs?

To become a good chef, first you must like your work as well as those who work with you. In addition to these social skills, you need excellent professional knowledge and a high degree of skills, as well as the ability to pass on your knowledge to your colleagues. If I were to offer advice to students, I would tell them to learn as much as they can from their chefs, and to exchange ideas with Europe’s most gifted professionals.

3.Restolingua – a highly effective tool for translating menus

www.restolingua.com currently enables users to translate any professional menu into the following eight languages: Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Restolingua is currently seeking schools willing to coordinate the work of translating the 22,000 expressions into all the languages of the AEHT member countries which are not yet available, and to add expressions relating to regional specialities, dishes and ingredients. With your collaboration, all menus could be translated with no problems – as for example the menu of the dinner served to the AEHT Executive Board on March 6th 2010 at the Lapa Palace in Lisbon.

Dinner in the Sala Columbano of the Lapa Palace – Lisbon

Entrado : - Sopa rica de peixe com crosta de massa folhada

Prato : Leitão assado com grelos salteados ao alho e puré de

batata doce

Sobremesa : Tarte de queijo com frutos marinados em vinho tinto

Café & Mignardises

Vinhos Quinta Casal Branco, branco – Ribatejo

Monte da Cal, tinto - Alentejo

Fish soup in puff pastry crust


Restolingua provided the following English translation:

Starter: Fish soup in puff pastry crust

Main Course: Roasted suckling pig

with garlic sautéed turnip tops and sweet potatoes purée

Dessert: Cheesecake Lisbon style with red wine marinated fruit

Coffee and Mignardises

Wines: Quinta Casal Branco, white – Ribatejo

Monte da Cal, red - Alentejo

If you are interested in working with Restolingua, please contact directly the Restolingua director Paul R.A.J. Van den Heuvel or the Head of Operations (Paul’s wife), Arike Vermazen (email : [email protected]) and look at the rates and the agreement signed by the AEHT and Restolingua at www.aeht.eu. Best wishes, and we look forward to seeing you in Lisbon - Bem-vindo a Lisboa! Nadine SCHINTGEN AEHT General Secretary

Text: N. Schintgen with contributions from L.

Robert Photos: N. Schintgen, the organisers of the Riolo

Terme event and some AEHT teachers English translation : J. Rees Smith

Our Professional Partners :

aeht newsletter of april 2010

Documents