The Hospitality Management students (Division of Administration and Economics) visited the Wellington Hotel NYC located at 7th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan on October 30 in 2019. The hotel is well-known as one of the New York's historic hotels and attracted lots of hotel guests who want to visit famous places like Times Square, Broadway, Carnegie Hall, Central Park, and Rockefeller Center.
Our students had opportunities to see various types of hotel guest rooms and to listen to how the hotel has developed hotel service qualities to satisfy hotel guests. After a hotel room tour, students were invited to a meeting with all department managers such as front desk, security, housekeeping, sales, etc. Students actively asked many questions related to current hotel industry issues and learned practical insights into the real industry world. After the conversation, the front desk manager guided our group through the back of the house. It was a special chance to see all the offices where managers and staffs work for management. Especially, it was very interesting to visit a giant laundry facility and engineering rooms inside the building. Samantha, a visiting student, described this experience in her reflection report, “I was very well informed in a short period of time about what their duties include on a day-to-day basis and how the structure of their department operates.”
A site visit is one of the essential components of academic learning in hospitality management. It is significantly important for students to be exposed to real and authentic experiences with intangible hotel service quality. Hospitality management faculty and the career center advisor have developed many site visits to hospitality businesses every semester.
