Business action in Warsaw School of Tourism and Recreation

Warsaw School of Tourism and Hospitality Management invited Warsaw representatives of tourist business sphere with the proposal of cooperation. As a result of this initiative was created the Business Council, whose members support the University in preparing students to work in the sector.

“The idea of establishing Business Council came up because of great collaboration of Vistula Group of Universities with different entrepreneurs. The strength of Warsaw School of Tourism and Hospitality Management is in the participation of practitioners in the studying process. Students and graduates mostly appreciate when people, strongly related to the management of tourism, sport and recreation sphere teach them business. That’s why we decided to invite the best Polish entrepreneurs for cooperation and created the Business Council , which is not only advise, but also passionately participate in School activities”,-says Dr. Krzysztof Celuch, Vice President of Warsaw School of Tourism and Hospitality Management.

Among the members of the SGTiR Business Council, chaired by Wojciech Liszka, President of Z-Factor and the outgoing President of the MPI, are representatives of hotel chains, conference objects, meetings organization agencies (corporate events, incentive and business travel, conferences), travel agencies, professional associations and corporations and the media industry representatives. For today the Council is represented by following companies: Starwood, Orbis, Best Western, Focus Hotels, Prestige Hotels, Louvre Hotels Group, Groupon Poland, HRG, Netmedia Business Travel Expo XXI, Warsaw, RoomAuction.com, Jan Pol, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, ICP Group, Mazurkas, Hays, the media industry-MeetingPlanner.pl and Hotelier, and organization: AZS, IGHP, Site, MPI, SOIT, SBE and PIT.

“We could make unbelievable. We’ve compiled the largest players in our market to jointly promote the wider tourism as an attractive sphere for young people. Our team creates thousands of the workplaces in Poland and I believe that cooperation with one of the biggest universities in the country (more than 3000 students in Tourism department) bring a large variation of ratio on the entire market” – highlights Wojciech Liszka.

The idea of the Council is to exchange opinions, share the expectations from graduates to be hired and direct tend towards building the position of the sector and its promotion among youngsters.

The first stage of the work were consultations on the study program and its revision by taking into account the guidelines of the business side. The next stage is to implement ideas which were proposed by the members of the Council.

The program, prepared by Business Council, is scheduled the way that students of SGTiR will be able to visit (within the internship) hotels, conference objects, offices, meetings and events organization companies at every stage of the process. Members of the Business Council will cordially prepare lectures on the areas they are specialized. Also, Business Council starts a leadership program, which involves the direct cooperation of Council member with the student for the entire academic year. Another joint venture is a “48 hours program”-students will prepare the project on the basis of the brief prepared by members of the Business Council. The Council divided into teams will develop case studies specific to the sector. During the meetings was defined the problem of employers regarding the competence of the future employees. The Council, in relation to the University programs, evolved the concept of the developing necessary skills of these students. An important aspect for the members of the Council is also to understand the expectations of students, for both recruitment and conduct practices and internship, introducing to the profession or business activity. Productive internships will be developed by a team made up of members of the Council and of the students who have passed all the stages of this process and can share their experiences.

“We would like to make “business” closer to the “university”, consult and match programs to meet the needs of entrepreneurs and create nice conditions for induction to the graduates become attractive tasty morsel in the labor market”, – explains Wojciech Liszka.

In addition to this, the Business Council is a meeting of the world of science and business with a purpose of development the tourism sector, its promotion, also building relationships between its members.