Purpose -This paper examines some of the most difficult barriers that hotel chains must overcome when trying to expand internationally. It argues for the importance of the role of well educated hotel management trainees and new graduates in this process. Design/methodology/approach -The methodology was to compare the problems faced by three major international hotel chains (Mövenpick, Kempinski, and Radisson) when expanding into emerging markets with those of a "base case": The Moscow Aerostar Hotel. Data were obtained through interviews and processed in a comparative manner, contrasting it with the contents of the main case. Findings -Having identified the common issues that the companies interviewed had to resolve when expanding, which skills educators in hospitality management should enhance in order to produce professionals who are mentally equipped to face current and future challenges with regards to the internationalisation of hotels were determined. Practical implications -The recommendations arising from this piece will be of use to educators in hospitality management when designing programmes of study and curricula to meet the needs of the labour market. Equally, it will warn practitioners of the common problems to be faced when breaking into international hotel markets based on the experience of colleagues in the industry. Originality/value -Both practitioners and educators in the hospitality domain will benefit from the synthesis offered in this paper, as it puts together convergent views on what currently worries major players in the field during this time of challenging, but unavoidable globalisation.

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This paper showcases on the contribution of Cesar Ritz Colleges (CR) at supporting the organization and running of support services at a major international sports event and the Swiss National Hospitality House in the Athens and Torino Olympics. Through the description of how CR managed to connect the knowledge developed by their students in the classroom with the catering of the House of Switzerland during the Olympic Games in Athens and Torino and then by elaborating on how the experience obtained through this exercise was reincorporated in their teachings. This article draws on the possibilities that academic institutions can optimize their curriculum in order to produce a more complete and comprehensive pedagogical experience, that is significantly in-line with the needs of the industry.

Switzerland is a country with particularly strong immigration regulations, which obliges Hospitality Schools to very often restrict their recruitment for instructors to the local labour market. The students, however, mostly come from distant countries. These students naturally bring their own cultural backgrounds and mental programming, which is not necessarily compatible with those of their lecturers.  This paper will study potential areas of misunderstandings and communication problems between students and teachers interacting in Swiss Hospitality Management Schools, due to their different cultural backgrounds.

This article questions the perception of excellence in three different and geographically distant locations: Buenos Aires (Argentina), Coventry (UK) and Shanghai (China) and inquires about the capacity of educational systems to generalize globally the appreciation of student and university staff work. The main issue on which this article focuses is whether what higher education institutions consider as bad, good or excellent is culturally sensitive, and if so, how to agree on objectives and procedures that are universally applicable. Current environmental conditions in the higher education landscape are pushing towards the development of international links between universities under different forms, such as franchised degrees, joint programs, mutual faculty and student exchanges, etc. As this new reality demands the homogenization of the curricula delivered as well as a compatible process of evaluation across borders, how could we achieve global excellence if what we understand by this term is culturally sensitive?