Hotel School rankings

What a surprise is was to open the ICHRIE “Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research” and reviewing the article “A World Ranking of the Top 100 Hospitality and Tourism Programs” published in the November 2009 issue (Volume 33, number 4).

My opinion about rankings is herewith confirmed and shows that you can measure different criteria, taking a different sample and get a totally different ranking outcome.

This new ranking clearly explains the research method applied and research programmes according to published research articles by their faculty. The result of this ranking is therefore clearly based on research output of the faculty of these programmes.

The ranking published and widely used for marketing purposes by Laureate Inc. (Glion/Les Roches), however measures employability of graduates but does not provide such information as the Hotel schools / Programmes which were included in the survey, nor the definition and relative criteria of “hiring managers” (a term which I have never come across, and which is unclear from the profile of the sample used, as only 21% can be defined as “managers”).

One can find only 3 schools being ranked in both surveys but in rather different positions, with the exception of Cornell University, ranked 2nd and 4th respectively. EHL is ranked 2nd / 83rd and Oxford Brookes is ranked 6th and 49th.

“César Ritz” colleges was ranked 9th by the “Laureate ranking” and does not appear in the ranking published in “A World Ranking of the Top 100 Hospitality and Tourism Programs”, simply because of our own limitations in size and resources to compete with academic universities. However I am very proud to note that our long term affiliated universities, Washington State University (WSU) is ranked 11th worldwide and 9th in the US institutions and our English partner Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is ranked 23rd worldwide an 2nd in Britain. Partner universities of other Swiss schools are either not ranked or ranked behind our partners.

The academic ranking of our partner universities show our sincere and continuous desire to cooperate with top ranked research based universities, which impose high standards on our curriculum, faculty and learning resources’ – a definite advantage for the more competitive students.

Thus, the question remains: which hotel school is the right one for you? Are academic standards important? Yes! Are careers important? Yes! “César Ritz” Colleges and our partners are highly ranked in both surveys.

Martin Kisseleff
President.