The One Thousand blog

I look at my experience at the Hotel School today and can only imagine what it was like nearly 50 years ago.  While I am sure that the “hotelies” of today have the same mentality as the “hotelies” of the past, a lot has changed here: Look at what we have accomplished!  Look at where we have come from and what we were able to create – it really is INCREDIBLE. Our initial “yesterday’s” have developed into some remarkable “today’s.”  Take a look…

Yesterday: The first issue of the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly came out on May 1, 1950 with almost 3,000 subscribers.  Nearly 10 years later in September of 1962, Dean Beck and other Cornell trustees met with 17 industry leaders to discuss new publications and a possible new center for hotel industry research.

Today: The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR), the prime source of research in the hospitality industry, publishes the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly to distribute the Center’s ideas, theories, and models around the world; in addition to this, the Center also publishes the Cornell Hospitality Reports, Cornell Hospitality Tools, Cornell Hospitality Roundtable Proceedings, and Industry Perspectives: A White Paper Series from Cornell.

Yesterday: In the 1960’s nearly 400 students were a part of the Hotel School, and foreign students accounted for an average of 10% of the Hotel School’s student body.

Today: Almost double in size, nearly 800 students attend the Hotel School, of which almost 200 are multicultural students from over 30 different countries.

Yesterday: In the 1950’s, alumni in other countries began to create social organizations centered around the Hotel School. In 1953 a Japan chapter was created, 1959 a Caribbean chapter, and in 1961 a Central America chapter and European chapter were created.

Today: With over 11,000 alumni, there are 60 regional alumni chapters around the globe.

Clearly over the past 50 years our school has become a powerhouse in the hospitality field.  With the help of our alumni, the Hotel School is the perfect learning and practice environment where people like you and me have experienced the fun and excitement of being a “hotelie.” I can’t even imagine what the future of this place will bring.  Can you? — Rachel Berman ‘11

After putting my restaurant concept idea in front of Drew Nieporent in New York and developing it within the hotel school, I wanted to get some additional professional feedback. I thought about getting my plan some thoughtful attention from resources here at the hotel school. Will Dowling told me to approach the Lee Pillsbury Institute with the promise that it would open me up people who could really make a difference in my business. A week later, I met with Tom Ward, the director of the institute. He helped find the best resource for me to reach out to, and within the next day, I was eating breakfast with Warren Leeds, the entrepreneur in residence and president of Dartcor Management. Warren Leeds critiqued my plan and has supported me in its progress since he left Cornell to return to New Jersey. I would recommend from this experience students who have an entrepreneurial goal take it up with the Lee Pillsbury Institute as the first place for support.

Jake Marmulstein is a sophomore at the Hotel School and can be reached at:  jmarmulstein@gmail.com

Now that everyone has had time to process the happenings at the Innovation Network… let’s hear your takeaways!

Yana Bushoy: When do you think the hospitality market will rebound?

Michael Medzigian: I am rather concerned about this issue.  I think it will take a long time to rebound entirely. It will be a muted recovery that will be very flat. And it will take a very long time to return to where we were.

YB: What do you believe is the next ‘emerging market’ in hospitality?

MM: The crystal ball is much cloudier than ever before. What is clear is that people feel poorer than they did two years ago.  Therefore, they will spend their money differently. There will be a rise in low-cost concepts. I see things like youth hostels and scaled back concepts such as Pod Hotels being popular in the coming years.  Also, social media and global travel will continue to change the industry.

YB:  How has the downturn of the economy affected Watermark?

MM: Watermark was absolutely affected by the economy but to a lesser extent than others. In the past five years, we have been very conservative when buying as we felt that pricing had gotten ahead of itself.  We would only buy when there were very good deals.  This mentality has significantly insulated us from what is a very difficult situation for all lodging industry investors.

With the economy the way it has affected the world as well as the hospitality industry, I would like all of us to realize that this is the time for innovation. When we must find a way to cut, instead we can find a way to create more efficiency and grow the pie. A hotel in India, for example, has no front desk but an all-automated high-end hotel that operates itself technologically. When print advertising is becoming expensive, social media is booming. As supplies become more expensive and scarce, we find ourselves recycling, reusing, and renewing those resources to increase growth rather than prevent loss. In terms of the hotel school or otherwise hospitality business, what can we do to create more efficiency for frequently visited tasks, methods, or supplies?

Jake Marmulstein is a sophomore at the Cornell Hotel School and can be reached at  jmarmulstein@gmail.com

General reciprocity makes the world a better place. But does hospitality? Social psychology research shows us that people feel better when carrying out altruistic acts or acts of benevolence and service to other people. Hospitality businesses, however, may be different. The majority of hospitality jobs involve low pay, physical labor, and long hours. And when the nation is undergoing a crisis in which people are being evicted from their homes on foreclosure, hotels still have on average 40% of their rooms available. How can we say that hospitality in today’s world makes a positive social impact? It would be interesting to see what people think about this topic and how it might be possible for us to think about social impact in our classes, jobs, and daily life. What does the hospitality business have to do with general reciprocity?

Jake Marmulstein is a sophomore at the hotel school and can be reached at jmarmulstein@gmail.com

A Good Time at the Hotel School

This is when studying becomes clockwork. I met a friendly senior hotelie who is in my finance class. We met once when homework was due and hotelies swarmed the student lounge during TA office hours, busy and cut-throat with question attention. The TAs could barely defend themselves from the questions that came and the demands that faced them from frustrated students. I decided it was not worth my time to wait for the TA, so I teamed up with this guy who had a financial calculator outside the lounge. We worked well together, so we met to study finance in a whiteboard room on the 300 level the day before the exam. It was a gamble, but I had no choice, I was Later, we had to move to a projector room, and that is when everything started to become easy, like becoming fluent in a language and suddenly realizing it. A red bull later, I would go up, do problem number eleven, he would check it and I would sit down while he did problem number twelve. I said, “bada-bing,” as the answers flowed in like triple bars on a slot machine, dividend after dividend.  We would re-teach one another any discrepancies in solutions and reach a mutual understanding of the language. At intermission, we got pizza delivered to the study room and kicked back for an episode of family guy. Finally, we got too burned out to continue and summed up that we both were prepared to take the exam. I had a good night’s sleep, clear of the usual pre-exam anxiety, and the finance was captured. It pays to study with someone who gets you. The exam was a piece of cake.

Jake  Marmulstein is a sophomore at the Cornell Hotel School and can be reached at jlm439@cornell.edu

When I got accepted to the Cornell Hotel School, I immersed myself in hospitality and hotel school culture before I even stepped foot on campus for the first time in August of last year. I worked an unstructured internship with corporate IHG for two months and scheduled meetings with local alumni regularly during the summer. I wore a suit and a tie and had to shave my face daily for the first time in my life. On the job at IHG I learned how to file papers like a champ, and I talked about RevPAR, occupancy, and ADR as if it was my native language. The building I worked in had an elaborate arboretum-like plant garden with a waterfall flowing over rocks and mirrors on the walls and ceilings. I felt classy just being there. The part about working for IHG which truly changed my development was that I had a real job with deadlines, supervisors, impression management, and loads of personal responsibility. I got to be acquainted with corporate culture, the office atmosphere, and the corporate work structure. This was a huge (and shocking) change for me since the only previous experience I had working a job involved providing service in a restaurant and refereeing soccer matches.

I remember emailing select members of the Cornell Atlanta Alumni Association and setting up meetings. One morning I drove forty minutes to see Rick Woroniecki at his cozy southern home. It was the very first meeting I had had with an alumnus and it was the most casual of meetings. We sat inside his house at a quaint coffee table and ate leftover food from his refrigerator while we talked. After a while, the conversation steered towards resume critiquing and Rick helped me design a resume right then and there. He also taught me basic knowledge of human resources and interviewing, and made some recommendations for career development. It was a magical resume – the same resume I presented to IHG later on that summer to get the job.

The best part of my visit was after our talk when he showed me what he does for work. Rick had forty or so different cars on his property (some for sale and other not) from 1950 Rolls Royce to Mercedes SL. The beautiful cars were adorned with plenty of Cornell brand memorabilia: stickers, big red on the license plate (I didn’t know Cornell fanatics existed by that time). Later I got to see a Mercedes with all black leather interior with a steel skull for the stick shift. The brand name “IVY RIDERS” was on the floor mats, steering wheel, and license plate. After my unforgettable tour of his marvelous collection, I remember he told me I could drive one the next time I come back. Maybe that was just my ridiculous imagination, but we’ll see this winter break.

Back to my point – Looking back, those like Rick who met with me, talked with me on the phone, worked with me at IHG, and replied to my obnoxious, long-winded, circuitous emails (pre-HADM 1165) provided a memorable learning experience that enriched my personal and professional development. Thanks alumni!

Jake Marmulstein is a Sophomore in the Hotel School and can be reached at jmarmulstein@gmail.com

Last week I spoke with Wendy Chan in the Communications Center on the third floor. I was waiting to meet with Professor Newman when I found myself, an hour later, in a rare and interesting conversation. It was another one of those conversations in which I learn a lot by asking questions and it’s usually impossible to have because people are so busy. I stayed with Wendy while she had open appointments in the Communications Center for three hours talking about different summer experiences, career options, and thoughts about our lives as we enter the real world. Much of what we discussed reflected a mature understanding of what to expect in the years to come. Both having traveled abroad and lived on our own, we related what it’s like to be out there in a work situation and be happy, or not, with the way daily life turns out. I figured, once you get to your career life, it is difficult to pull back your focus and think about what you might change to improve that situation. I learned loads about HVS consulting as an appraiser/property evaluator and traveling (building up loyalty programs with hotels and airlines). We discussed opening restaurants, consulting, Cornell Hospitality Consultants, traveling, writing (she has a blog), and working abroad eventually in our lives only to be put off 4-5 years by work in the United States gaining credibility and boosting our resume.

Jake Marmulstein is a student at the Hotel School and can be reached at jmarmulstein@gmail.com