“I am able to focus not only on hospitality, but also on science and technology to keep my entrepreneurial mind open and fresh,” says Balamurugan, who is known as ‘Bala’ on campus , which is located in the hills above Montreux. Offers spectacular views of the Alps and Lake Geneva.
multicultural campus
Away from the tropical climate of her hometown in Chennai, Bala has integrated well with the multicultural student community, which she says is essential to pursuing a career in hospitality. Their campus is filled with activities ranging from sports competitions to art sessions, dinners and much more. “Every student should join a committee as it will allow them to explore their creative interests, while developing leadership and management skills by organizing events and activities,” says Bala.
His curriculum, which prepared him to identify a business model through design thinking and creativity, plunges students into an industrial reality. “We are asked to work on real business situations as consultants, helping us get real-time feedback on our assignments and thought process,” says Bala.
course structure
In terms of structure, their program is organized into separate modules, and each has courses associated with them. “For academic classes, we have four different modules: Hospitality Operations, Disruption and Talent Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: From Idea to Business Model, Scaling Your Business: Digitalization and Go-to Market Strategy, and Financial Lifecycle. and funding. Each of these focuses on specialized topics that are essential to building a business, and each course has activities to develop both theoretical knowledge and soft skills. My favorite classes are Creativity and Innovation in Hospitality, Design Thinking And there were start-up creation process and business model identification, where we worked on a business idea for a whole month and then presented our concept to real investors,” says Bala.
Her Semester 1 course also includes a business field trip, for which Bala went to Amsterdam, Netherlands. “The trip is always organized in a state-of-the-art hospitality destination to inspire, meet experts and network. In Amsterdam, we saw companies that really focus on sustainability. We also from a company focused on blockchain technologies Met and it was interesting to see how they developed their own bitcoin making process. The ideas from the different businesses were both amazing and rich,” he says.
In Semester 2, students like him work on organizing an innovation fair where they put into practice the skills they learned through the first semester.
career plans
Currently in the final and third semester of her 2-year course, Bala has a choice between doing a 6-month internship or a business research project on a topic of her interest. Elaborating on his plans to start a company in Europe with one of his classmates at the hospitality institute, Bala says, “The institute has a careers and internship department that provides students with internships across the world through its career portal. Or guides in securing a job.”
He is grateful to his father who runs an event management company and a catering company in Chennai. “From a very young age, I used to accompany him and look at the details. He has taught me- Hospitality is an emotional connection between human beings. I hope to live up to that belief,” says Bala, committed to carrying on his family legacy.