How time flies, it’s been a month already since I’ve started working in the Raffles Dubai Hotel. I remembered my last post was on my first day in Dubai. Now one month just passed.

To be honest, the first two weeks were not that easy for me. As a receptionist, I need to learn to use the central reservation system, Opera (ORS). But at that moment, our hotel was busy. I’ll not disclose our occupancy, but I will say quite full. So my colleagues did not have time to teach me even though they really wanted to teach and let me practice. But still, I learned what I could just by watching and listening to how they dealt with the guests. And finally, in my third week, I did my first check-in and check-out. I was shaking after the guest left. I do not know, maybe it’s because of the excitement or a little bit of nerves. Do not laugh at me. You will understand when you have your job, especially your first job.

Actually, taking everything in consideration, the whole first month was not that difficult. I will say it was less stressful then I’d expected. Our training system is very effective and helpful and I have already gotten used to it. So nowadays, everything is going my way.

By the way, I discovered one thing in Dubai that am so proud to tell you. I found a lot of Glion alumni here. We are working in different hotels and in different departments. They are so cool. And even crazy. Sometimes I join them to party directly from my work at 1am. Or sometimes we go out on our day off. We have a lot of fun because we have one thing in common: The Glion Sprit.

So that’s enough about me. How are you guys? How was the mid-term break? I saw a lot of nice pictures on facebook. You guys remind me of my last break, I went 3 countries in a week. It was nice. I’m so jealous of you guys. All the best for the second term! See you next month.

Daniel

It’s been a while since I posted my last blog. It doesn’t mean I forgot you guys. The reason why I did not blog last month is because, honestly, I have nothing to share. During the last two months I was just staying at home, hanging out with my friends, enjoying the time with my families. Except I gained 5 kg, I have no interesting story to tell. But now everything is different. I have big news that I cannot wait to share with you. Right now, I am writing this blog in my room in Dubai. I have already got my work visa and finally landed in Dubai.

After calling my family, the first thing on my schedule was to write this blog to tell you about my amazing day in Dubai.

For international staff, the hotel has a pick-up service for the first time arrival. When I entered my room, there is a welcome basket on my bed with a welcome letter, snacks, tea, coffee, as well as a toothbrush and even shampoo. And what made me even more excited is everything is written in Arabic.

There are two swimming pools here. One is for men and the other is for women. There is a gym, one restaurant and one supermarket inside our accommodation, which is far beyond my expectations.

The hotel is 20 minutes away from our accommodation by bus, so each hour the hotel offers us two shuttle buses both from hotel and accommodation, 24 hours a day. All the service that the hotel offers us is really thoughtful and really gives the feeling that the employees are the company’s internal guest. Tomorrow will be my first day on duty, I am really looking forward to it. I’ll tell you more in my next blog.

Of course, I’ve had some internships before, but this is officially my first job. Sometimes life is so mysterious and full of surprises. You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Before last month, I’d never thought my first job would be in Dubai Raffles Hotel, but today I’m here. I am so joyful and happy for my life!

I want to say thank you to my family for their support, it means everything to me. And also I really want to say thank you to another lady, Mrs. Wendy Wu.

Wendy, it’s you who let me know about Glion, this amazing collage, for me you are not only the consultant of Glion, you are a close friend. I’ll never forget the heartfelt suggestions and help that you gave me. Thank you again for everything that you did for me. Hope to see you very soon in Dubai or in Beijing. Wish you have a very nice trip to Switzerland for our 50 years graduation party!

Ok my friends, so much for this time. Please let me know if you need any information from Dubai. I’ll do my best to help. See you in a few weeks.

Daniel

Hope everything is doing great. Sorry if you haven’t heard from me for a while, the academic life in Bulle keeps me quite busy…

I am pretty sure you are curious about the subjects we are being taught in Bulle, right? Last time, I mentioned that everything would be different from the academic point of view, compared to Glion campus. This blog post will give me the chance to explain to all my friends what we are studying at Glion Institute of Higher Education. Many times I have been asked: ‘what are you actually studying?’ ‘What do you do and which kind of subjects do you have?’ I guess many people imagine us, hospitality students, to be clearing plates and doing beds all day long. Well no, it is not only that!

Among the subjects I have this semester are: Food & Beverage Management, Rooms Revenue Management, Marketing, Entrepreneurship (a word I still have to think about twice before writing it down), and Management Finance. As you can read the word ‘management’ is present quite often. These courses are compulsory for all the students, but in addition to these it is possible to choose elective GenEd courses (General Education): I chose Architecture & Design and Natural Science.

As I am in semester 4, I have to look for an internship, starting beginning of summer. My dilemma is: ‘where would I like to go?’ Initially I was thinking of the U.S., New York City in particular, but it is very difficult to get an internship there.

On Tuesday I will have my interview with Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris. But right now I am on my way to Munich, Germany, where the Kempinski Career Day will take place in a couple of hours at Kempinski Hotel Airport München. So I will see where I will end up…

Well, I am landing in a couple of minutes, so I wish you all a nice day.
Greetings from the sky!

Alex

Sorry I haven’t written for a while! The past few weeks have been very interesting and full of surprises. I would like to start of by saying thank you to the arrival team that picked-up all the students at the airport; you were all very helpful and efficient. I was welcomed warmly and I found all the students very nice and helpful (Glion Spirit)! The first week was set up in order to make the new students familiar with their environment and to meet each other, which I found very helpful and every one was very kind and welling to help out.

Upon arrival I was given my student card and the next few days were designed so that we would know all the teachers and who to go to if we had any problems. We all had a few days of “Induction days”, we were put in groups and played games and carried out different quizzes and activities, we even sang Karaoke. After settling in, my first surprise was the Craft Base Learning course, which I found rather interesting, I chose Food and Beverage for my CBL. I learnt quite a lot, from setting tables to serving, to stewarding, and the list goes on. I also had the opportunity to be a chef quite a number of times, which helped me enhance my leadership skills! During the course of my CBL we had the also had a verity of workshops that were at our disposal, workshops such as “wine pairing”, cocktail demo, flaming demo etc…

Coming to Glion has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. The education offered here and the friends I have made already prove this.

I wish you all a very pleasant week!

Aye

I also have good news to tell today, I got a phone call yesterday about my job from Raffles Dubai. And it was a YES. They will offer me a job in Front Office. I am still feeling happy about that. It’s been almost three months since I started sending my CVs to hotels and other organizations, I’ll say it’s not easy to get one for me. I say that it’s difficult for me for two reasons: nationality and personal preference. I say that because personally, I want find a job outside of China, but on the other hand, for Chinese citizens we have limited countries where it is easy to get a work visa. So, in these months, I learned all kinds of words which have the same meaning,“NO”. To be honest, after I got the postgraduate diploma from Glion, it’s really hard to accept these rejection letters again and again. But I did not give up. I didn’t believe these political issues, I trust myself, and after one year of study and five months internship with Glion, I knew I would find a good place in the end….and I was right!

Now, I’m just waiting for the contract they are going send to me, and then I’ll be on my way. This is just the beginning of my career, I have no idea what is going on in the future, but I will believe in myself.

At the end, I want to say Happy New Year to the Chinese students. The Spring Festival is coming. In our culture, Spring Festival is our “Christmas day”, it’s the most important day throughout the whole year. This year, I’m lucky that I can stay at home to celebrate with all my families. But it’s not like that for the students who are on campus, so I wish all the best for you, Happy Chinese New Year!

Daniel

Hello everyone!! Can you believe it? A year ago I was still nervously awaiting the beginning of my journey into the hospitality industry and now I have finished the first two semesters. I can honestly not explain how happy and incredibly in awe I am, as to what I have seen and experienced throughout the past year. I met the most fascinating people and got to know oh so many different personalities. I took my first steps in the hospitality industry during a very interesting, all be it not always easy, internship in a lovely hotel in a country I had never been to before. Of course, through all of this and with the help of the courses in the first semester, I have already accumulated a whole lot of knowledge and have learned more about my own preferences in the industry.

In my last blog, I left off with the start of my night shift, so I thought I would tell you a bit about those interesting nights. Honestly, I have to say that the beginning of the night shifts was quite difficult seeing as you rarely see other people and simply due to the fact that your daily routine is somewhat turned upside down. However, after a few nights I had gotten more used to this spooky shift and was not as tired, as in the beginning.

Overall, I was able to perform a large part of the night audit during these shifts, which was definitely more than I had expected and gave me a good insight into the nightly tasks. My dancing and singing manager also helped a lot in making the night a lot more entertaining. Yes, you read correctly, my manager was actually always very upbeat and decided to keep himself awake by singing. I honestly do have to say that I admire the people who constantly work overnight, such as the overnight housekeepers and overnight managers, as well as those who always have to change their shifts, constantly shifting from early morning to night shifts, such as the security people, as it is a very hard job to do in my opinion, and these people’s lives are obviously a lot different from others. All in all, I feel that my night shifts were a very valuable experience, but definitely did not turn into my favourite shifts overall.

After my night shifts were over (all in all I was on night shifts for about three weeks), I was introduced back into ‘normal’ life, which actually included the occasional rays of sun. Not too many of course, it was Ireland after all (no, the rain is neither a prejudice against the country, nor a myth!), but now and then the sun did decide to say a short hello. The day shifts were all very regular and those where I was allowed to work at the desk by myself were especially exciting. Then, at the beginning of December, the hotel started to fill up. Those busy days, where we had people queuing up at reception were definitely the most fun, but also the most nerve-wracking, all while being very good days to get used to quite stressful situations. Then as the gorgeous Christmas trees and the lovely holiday decorations were put up and the Christmas music finally started playing (personally, I would have started playing the music at the beginning of November, but for some mysterious reason my colleagues were not that enthusiastic about my genius idea), I realized that my internship at the Ritz-Carlton was coming to an end and that I would actually get to go back home.

A few weeks later that is what I did. After a tearful goodbye from my lovely colleagues and friends, I packed my bags, which were of course overweight due to the unwillingness of the scale at the intern house to cooperate and therefore caused a bit of trouble at the airport, and after all this finally headed back home to Germany and later on to South Africa, which is where I am now.

All in all I have to say that the internship at the Ritz-Carlton honestly helped me to learn a lot about hospitality and gave me a very good insight into Rooms Division, while my friends and colleagues made my time there all the more special, which I can not thank them for enough.

With this I wish all of you a wonderful New Year filled with joy, good health and success and I will write my final blog, once I am back in Switzerland.

Have a lovely week!

Lea

Happy New Year! Is incredible how the time flies isn’t it? X-mas has passed, New Year’s Eve has come and is already gone and let’s all hope to have a great 2012!

How is everyone doing right now? To all the new students joining Glion in a couple of weeks: how do you feel? Have you already started writing your checklists? Packing perhaps? Or are you still thinking what to bring with you to Switzerland?

I still have some weeks left before going back to school: I will start my 4th semester in the Bulle campus, which is only twenty minutes away from Montreux, however, everything is going to change one more time for me: the place, the campus… but luckily I will be back with all my friends, which is great! In the Bulle campus, we will focus more on our academic skills rather than on our practical ones, since there will no longer be Craft Based Learning (CBL). Once in Bulle, it will be possible as well to choose some elective courses, according to our interests and preferences.

Have any of you (new students) already tried to picture yourselves in a kitchen? Not really right? I couldn’t do it either! I was scared of the idea I had to cook, in particular since I was good only at preparing salads and sandwiches! But don’t worry you are going to be fine! I really enjoyed the time I spent during CBL. There was a lot to learn and things to do while you get to know your classmates even better and you will feel like being part of a family; a team that works together and helps each other, which is important for our industry.

Well everyone I wish you all a wonderful day and enjoy what is left of your holidays. See you soon!

I prefer to start from the good news: I got my certificate of employment for my internship. This means that I’ve officially finished my internship. It was such a good experience for me.

As a cost controller in the F&B department on campus, my main responsibilities were:

1. Control the deliveries, storage and stock of non-perishable food items and beverages
2. Participate in the laying out of the main cellar-inventory-purchasing-cost control
3. Control of order forms, transfer forms from the different outlets
4. Elaborate and analyze the monthly closings of our f&b outlets
5. Assist in the organization of special student events, and participate actively in functions within the community.

During my work in this position, I learned a lot from my chef Mr. Charles and all my other colleagues. They taught me how to work in a team as a team player and how to work effectively, which are very important qualities in the hotel industry.

Actually. If you have already read my previous blog, then maybe you will find out some clues about the sad news that I want share with you. Yes, as soon as I finish my internship, I have to leave Glion, leave Switzerland. After these days of studying in Glion, I have already fallen in love with this place. The fascinating nature views, lovely people from all over the world, the professional teachers, the tasty food…. It is really hard to say goodbye. But this is life, I have to move on. So, Goodbye Glion…. I will miss all my presentations, reports, exams… even though I was suffering a little bit when I was doing that, but now everything seems so precious. And Goodbye my friends… I will miss all the good times that we had together. Obviously we know how to work hard and play even harder.

Now, I am back in China, waiting for my job offer. I hope I will get it before my next blog, so I can tell you guys, but no matter where I will go or what I will do one thing is for sure: I will spread the Glion sprit to other people and inspire them.

For the last time, I say goodbye to Switzerland and everyone that I loved! I will come back soon.

Happy New Year!!!

Zhen

Although I am very excited about this new encounter, I also have mixed feelings, a feeling of nervousness and anxiousness; a feeling I believe is normal when embarking on an adventure, a new chapter in everyone’s life. However, once I think of the excitement of joining such a prestigious university like Glion, all such feelings disappear immediately and I feel lucky to be given an opportunity to fulfill my dream at a highly respected institute.

I am doing what I’ve always dreamed of so it all makes it worthwhile!

After carefully reviewing the list that was provided by Glion on what to pack – which I found very helpful and thoughtful, mind you. I found the list of items to bring very helpful as it made my choice of clothing easier especially at this time of year (winter), which, I personally love, as I love and enjoy skiing. I was very excited to hear that student body organizes outings such as ski trips.

I am really looking forward to the beautiful view of the lake Geneva from my room on campus.

As I check off my Glion pre arrival list, I know it is time to say my goodbyes to my wonderful family and friends. Although goodbyes are hard, I know I am about to embark on something great, I am about to open the door of many great things, many greats opportunities and a bright future.

I am very anxious and I cannot wait to meet my teachers, my fellow classmates, the world of hospitality and my future home! I know it all sounds quite intimidating but my mother always said to me the “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up”.

Special thanks to my lovely family: Mummy, Daddy, David, Ayinda & Shimie – Thank you for always supporting me and encouraging me to accomplish my dreams, I Love You. &To an amazing Shareena.S: Thank you so much for always being there and pushing me forward! God bless you

Aye

My name is Wang Zhen. I come from China. People call me Daniel on campus. If you want to be remembered, you better have an English name (for Chinese people only), but it is not obligatory. I was in Glion for the Postgraduate Diploma in Hospitality Management. I have already finished my study part, I am doing my internship on Glion campus as Cost Controller in the F & B Department. Nowadays, I only have one month left before I finish my internship and I am looking for the job now. So the main part of my blog in the following year will be my career life, as well as my working experience in some countries, maybe in Maldives, in China or maybe elsewhere.

If you do not mind, I would like to share a few more details about myself. As I told you, I am Chinese. In my family, I have two brothers, one sister and really cool parents, which is a huge family in China. I was born in a small city called Fushun. It is located in the north part of China, four hours from Beijing by train. We have a very typical continental climate in my hometown. In summer it can be 35 degrees and in winter we can also have 35 degrees below zero. So, you can imagine how warm I felt the winter here in Switzerland.

Before I came to Switzerland, I was doing my university in Shenyang Institute of Engineering. My major was tourism management which is also related to hospitality. I think this is one of my reasons why I choose to my further study in hospitality industry.

The first time I worked in a hotel was three years ago. It was a Sheraton hotel, one of the Starwood hotels chain. I worked in the front office department as a concierge. Even doing that, I had the feeling that I liked this job. It is very important to realize what you really want to do in the future. After six months of internship in that hotel, I decided to continue my further studies in hospitality. Luckily, my previous hotel manager gave me the suggestion to come to Glion. Now, I really appreciate his suggestion. Taking everything into consideration, Glion is truly the top school in the hotel industry. With the “Glion Spirit”, you will never regret to be part of this family.

So guys, I am looking forward to seeing you soon on campus. If you want more information, you can visit other blogs from all my colleagues. We will try our best to present the life of Glion in different aspects with different cultures. And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Zhen.wang@glion.ch, danielw1987@163.com