Christmas at home before Les Roches Bluche

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Filippa

Santas Elf in Abu Dhabi

Hello new, old, current and potential Les Roches students! My name is Filippa and I will blog on this page for the next twelve months. So, welcome to my little world of words and pictures…

To me, it doesn’t matter where I’ve been or how long I’ve been away, it’s always good to come home. I have just come back from six months in Abu Dhabi where I did my second internship working for a hotel in the sales and marketing department. The city was very different compared to anything I’d seen before and the cultural differences were huge, but the work experience has been great, although the hours were long and I only had one day off per week.

Time flew by as it always does very quickly and I’m now back in Sweden with my family trying to make the most out of my four weeks of Christmas holiday before school starts in Switzerland in January. So far, I’ve unpacked four suitcases full of clothes, cleaned my room, decorated the Christmas tree and baked lot’s of goodies like saffron buns and gingerbread hearts, and decorated oranges with whole cloves – a must for Christmas! I absolutely love this holiday, and this year I’m going all in -no one can stop me!

Making gingerbread cookies

It is soon time to start my third year at Les Roches. I did the previous semesters at the Marbella campus where I had so much fun and met the coolest people, but this year I felt like it was time to swap the beach for the mountains, and so I decided to transfer to Bluche. I love skiing, although I must admit I’m not the best at it… I haven’t been on the slopes since 2009, so I could definitely use a private lesson or five.

I cannot wait to meet new faces (and old, since there are a few more of us coming from Marbella) and I’m sure we all will have the time of our lives.

The fourth Advent candle is lit

Wish I could write more but I’ve got to continue decorating the house. It’s a full time job being a Christmas enthusiast…

If you have any questions or thoughts regarding anything please feel free to post a comment at the bottom of this page and I will do my best to answer. You can also send me a message on facebook.com/filippah or follow me on Twitter @filippamaria.

See you soon… and a very Merry Christmas to you all!

X Filippa

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LRB Blogger : Leandros Pembos

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Leandros

Greetings to everyone!!

My name is Leandros Pembos and I am from the beautiful country of Greece. I was born and raised in the capital city of Greece, Athens. Athens is such a wonderful place to live!! In Athens, a visitor can enjoy amazing local dishes, in restaurants called “tavernas”. On the other hand, the options and the range of entertainment facilities is huge, like access to vibrant restaurants and night clubs offering an experience worth mentioning by every tourist. The historic downtown of Athens is the most touristic destination here and the first place that everyone arranges to visit. Acropolis, Sydagma square, and all the small roads near the hill of Acropolis are fully occupied by tourists who have come to see this magnificent ancient temple. It is truly amazing for everyone to see all this ancient statues and the ancient architecture and design.

Some views of Acropolis, Sudagma Square and a city views of Athens

At the age of seventeen, I decided to join the IB diploma program (International Baccalaureat) and finish the last two classes of high school with extra knowledge and a competitive advantage for applying to foreign universities. My decision was to follow a business and management path of studies in University so I took several subjects related like Business and Management, Economics etc. This decision was important for my academic career. I improved my English language skills to the maximum point and also my business and management knowledge. Now the “story” begins, one day the educational counselor of Les Roches here in Greece came to my school, the reason was a brief session about the hospitality industry and the school. The session structure was individual interviews with every interested student. I decided to join the session and we had a very nice conversation about my future aspirations and also what Les Roches and the industry are capable of offering. I spoke with my family and they mentioned to me that a very good and close friend graduated from Les Roches and now owns a hotel on Mykonos Island. We arranged a meeting to talk about everything and the final part of the discussion was to offer me a volunteer job as a trainee host in his 5 star hotel restaurant Myconian Ambassador Hotel during the summer period. During that 2 month internship I developed higher interpersonal skills, increased my communication skills and most importantly, my team work skills. After that challenging experience I was mature enough to take a decision and develop my hospitality knowledge later in Les Roches International School of Hotel Management.

View of the restaurant and the pool of the Myconian Ambassador hotel that I was working as a host.

The senior year of International Baccalaureat was really difficult, a lot of assignments, tests and mostly a lot of stress. One year that everyone waits for summer to come and replace the hard work during the winter. I have to say that I was one of them…

The summer finally came and everyone had to decide what they are going to do now. I decided to spend one month on vacation around the beautiful Greek islands in order to relax and the rest of the summer to work in order to increase my hospitality knowledge. The only destination that came to my mind again was the island of Mykonos, a major touristic destination which attracts people from all around the globe.

View of the restaurant /bar that I was working as a waiter.

This time I found work as a waiter in Tropicana beach bar. Tropicana was voted the best beach bar in Europe and one of the most famous around the globe so I thought that would be a good experience for my resume. The experience was amazing, I met people from all around the globe and increased my service techniques knowledge. Additionally, I had the opportunity to collaborate with employees from several parts of Europe.

Tropicana beach bar

During this period, I had the ability to work in a fast service environment serving around 500 people over the day. I have to say that it was difficult but really beneficial to understand the hard working and motivation part that the hospitality industry wants.

Part of Mykonos city (chora)

All the experiences described above have helped me to decide the industry that I want to work for, they affect me in a beneficial way to develop several new abilities, put a goal in my career life which is to succeed and become a successful general manager of a hotel after years and finally to join the BBA/Hotel Management program of Les Roches International School of Hotel Management.

I can’t wait to join the school in January and with the support of my family I am ready to succeed and face the demands of the school. I am sure that’s it is going to be a memorable experience for my entire life both for my career but also as a person. Can’t wait to meet all you guys!! Hope you are having fun and see you soon all on campus.

Summer pictures of me in Greek islands

Leandros Pembos

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LRB Blogger : Samantha Parkyn

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Samantha

Hi, my name is Samantha Parkyn (I prefer Sam though), and I was born and raised in Switzerland. To be more specific I was born in the French speaking region of Switzerland – the beautiful, international city of Geneva. As well as being the home to the European Headquarters of the United Nations, Geneva also houses the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which has proved popular in the media over the last couple of years.

The City is famous for its tourist attraction and landmark; The Jet d’Eau, which paints a beautiful picture of the city on a sunny day.

Geneva is situated just over an hours drive away from multiple ski resorts such as ‘Les Portes du Soleil’ (a favorite of mine), Verbier, and of course the amazing resort of Crans Montana which is sat just above the lovely town of Bluche, home to Les Roches.
Geneva is also a great place to see some breath taking views, such as Mont Blanc (shown above), and the lovely silhouette of the sun setting behind the Jura.

Me in the Three Valleys - Meribel, on my ski instructors course.

Because I have lived my whole life in Switzerland, I was fortunate enough to learn how to ski at a young age, and I have learnt to love the sport of skiing. Which is why I attended a 10 week ski instructors course in the french resort of the 3 Valleys during my gap year. I had the most amazing time, unfortunately it ended less well, with a ruptured cruciate ligament in my knee.

However, during my recovery from this accident I stumbled upon my desire to return to my studies, which then led to my discovery of Les Roches.

My dog Benji in the snow. And me at a local ski resort called Crozet, looking down onto Lake Geneva

I have to admit that the location of Les Roches and the fact that it is situated so close to Crans Montana, slightly aided my decision when choosing a school. Although, I knew I wanted to go there as soon as I went to visit the campus. Even after visiting the campus for only a few hours, I was already feeling comfortable and at home, I wanted to stay and start studying straight away!

My hobbie and passion is horse riding and I am lucky enough to own my own horse (Lysi, the one in the pictures!), we have competed in local show jumping competitions together. I love nothing more than spending all day at the stables with the horses.

Unfortunately I recently had yet another accident, this time a broken ankle caused by a fall off a horse. It would seem that my hobbies have not been too kind to me this past year! However, the time needed to recover has proved rather useful as I am using it to learn a new language – Italian.

I attended the International School of Geneva – La Chataignerai, for 13 years and obtained my IB. I Studied Geography, Economics, French, Environmental Systems, English and Maths, my favourites being Geography and French. During my time at La Chat, I was lucky enough to go on several school trips and study trips to different locations within Europe, including; Barcelona, Florence, the Camargue, Strasbourg and Wales, which were all educational and enjoyable.

I have always been interested in the hospitality/tourism industry, I was always happy when my geography lessons in school were centered around tourism. I even chose to complete my Extended Essay for my IB by researching how a small ski resort could improve its number of tourists.

I really enjoy traveling and going different places with my family, and I have always found myself being interested in, and observing the level of service given in hotels. Having been the customer many times before, I think it will be interesting to learn how to be on the other side of things, and to be the person providing the service. I think that this will be a challenge, but it is a challenge that I am looking forward to.

I will be starting at Les Roches in January to do my BBA in International Hotel Management and I am very much looking forward to joining the school, and to starting this new chapter in my life, January couldn’t come sooner!!

Looking forward to meeting you all!

Sam

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Welcome to the life of a hotel management student…

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Filippa

My name is Filippa Hertzman and I’m a 24 year old globe trotter from the south of Sweden starting at Les Roches Switzerland in January 2011. I will transfer directly to the semester 5 of my Bachelor. For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by hotels; these magical places where people sleep on fluffy pillows with chocolates on top, wake up and go to large scrumptious all-you-can-eat buffets, get new towels and made up rooms every day, and 24 hour assistance only by pressing a button.

I have never regretted my chosen career path; in fact, it’s probably one of the best choices I’ve made in my life so far. What’s most thrilling about working in the hospitality industry is the fact that you’ll have no idea of how the day will turn out –every day will be full of surprises.

When I graduated from high school I still hadn’t figured out what to “be when I grow up”, so I went on a three-month backpacking trip with my best and oldest friend to Australia and Asia (no need to mention we had the time of our life right?).

When I came back I started working at a supermarket in Sweden, and after a few months I had saved enough money to move all the way to the home of the sheep, or in other words, Palmerston North, New Zealand, where I found a job as a waitress and ended up living for seven months. The following year I moved across the pond to Melbourne, Australia and enrolled at RMIT’s fashion merchandising course. I love clothes and fashion; always have, and naturally I thought that was what I was destined to work with.

After five months I realised that this was not for me, and moved back home to continue working at the supermarket. I earned quite a lot and still lived at home but I was starting to get restless, and knew that I couldn’t stay for much longer. My only ticket to the “real” world was through education. Period. I was accepted to a business school in Sweden but changed my mind at the last minute –it just didn’t feel right. Instead, I moved to the city of lights and the home of the croissants – Paris, and when I wasn’t partying on Champs Elysees or vintage shopping in Le Marais I worked as a babysitter for two French boys.

During my first couple of weeks I picked up a book I had read a few years back in Oz called “Hotel Babylon” about a receptionist’s 24 hours in a luxury London hotel. I finished it the following week and as I put it down it was finally clear to me –I’m going to work in hotels! I started writing the application letter to Les Roches Marbella and a month or so later I got a reply that I had been accepted.

I was beyond excited. In January 2010, I started my first day as an HOI student at Les Roches Marbella, in June I went on my first internship as a front office agent and concierge assistant at a five star hotel in Sweden, returned to Marbella in January 2011 for HOII, and my latest internship has been in PR & Marketing at a four star hotel in Abu Dhabi.

I thought it was time for me to meet new people and hit the slopes (and of course enjoy the après ski), so I decided to leave the Marbella campus and move back to Switzerland for my third year. Yes, back. I lived in Basel for two years during my early teens, but the difference this time is that the people will be saying bonjour instead of gruetzi… and that I’m a little older and wiser too, of course!

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IP Event: Dinner with a Murderer

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Pamela Calvas

During the past weeks, we (the students of PGD II) have been working so hard in order to put together an event that meets the standards of our school, Les Roches.

This IP EVENT (Integrated Project) is our most important project where we have to put into practice all of our knowledge regarding Events Management from PGD I and PGD II courses and turn it into a practical event. For this event, we invite students and faculty of the school to come to a dinner held in one of the school facilities on a Saturday night. The theme of the event is decided after the presentations of all groups of PGD II, who work throughout the first part of the semester to win the opportunity to lead and manage this kind of event. In our semester, Autumn 2011, the winning theme was “Dinner with a Murderer”. It was an interesting, new and challenging idea that was proposed by a group of PGD students and we all have been working very hard in order to accomplish and be successful in the organization of a theme based event like this where everything in the evening has to be appropriate and match the name of the event.

We have been divided into groups and we will all be working on the pre-event organization and during the event. Some are assigned to kitchen and started already to cook a trial experience of how the evening will be like. Others started with the service meetings to rehearse all of the techniques for a 5 course meal to provide the best service possible. Students have also started rehearsing the preparation of drinks. The decoration, marketing, and sales have been assigned to other students, as is my case, and I have started to organize the entertainment for that evening. It has been fun to organize acting sketches with my classmates. The idea of this theme is for guests to be entertained by finding out who committed a crime in the restaurant! In this case, who killed the chef!

Video of the rehearsal of the acting

The clues are given by actors following a script written according to the food that is being served, the dances performed and all of the acting happening throughout the dinner. It is an interesting project, as it’s not only a simple dinner! A lot more effort is required to entertain our guests… I wanted to share with you some of the rehearsals in Market Place (the most popular restaurant at the school where students eat) that is usually the place where these events take place each year. It has been a lot of hard work, but also fun, to act and dance to a song that corresponded to the theme.

In the acting, I was performing the role of a waitress that was there during the “murder of the chef” and who becomes also a suspect along with other waiters and waitresses. I also prepared the choreography for the song Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson which met the theme and the acting and I did it with the collaboration of other students from the school. Thanks to all of you who helped in the preparation of this event. In my next blog, I will share with you some pictures of this wonderful evening that will certainly turn out to be a success!
Video of the rehearsal of the dance:

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Back from midterm break!!!

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Pamela Calvas

The time has passed so fast and unfortunately I have not been able to keep up with my blogs as usual, the school really has kept us quite busy with assignments and midterm exams! I will compensate with some important information, fun stories and events at Les Roches that I have been collecting in the last few weeks for those of you who are interested in the student life at the school.

Midterm break really was a breath of fresh air allowing us to continue with school assignments and lessons. As I have stated before, the teaching system at Les Roches evaluates the performance of students in several ways and some projects require you to put all your effort and integrate the knowledge you have of all subjects. Examples of these are the so-called IP projects.

But what is IP? It stands for Integrated Project and although it is not a very popular term among first year students it is all you will hear among people from third year (H03) and postgraduate students (like me) just before the midterm break! After it has been submitted, there are only a few exams or projects left et voila! The ambiance at the school changes as everyone gets ready to leave for midterm break! Bellow just some random pictures of some of my friends after those long study hours at school haha!

Now, passing to a more interesting topic, I wanted to talk about internships. As we all know, here at Les Roches, internships should be done after the completion of a course.

Depending on the program that you are following, the school encourages you to get work experience in hospitality related establishments in order for you to apply all the techniques learned at the school into real work situations according to a specific hospitality area that draws your interest the most.

Within any hospitality related establishment there are endless opportunities for students from our school to participate, learn and get professional and life experiences which in the near future might be highly valued by an employer. Besides, you never know what abilities you are capable of and some new talents might surface as you progress in your internship.

The options are endless for you to find your new location in the world; from a 5 star hotel in a cosmopolitan city in Europe, to an exotic beach resort in Southeast Asia or even a ski resort in the mountains of Switzerland, there really are no limits as long as you keep an eye on immigration regulations and more specifically into the requirements that recruiters are looking for. You have to get informed about where you are going and a new blog post will be informing you more about it next week.

For now, I would like to share with you an interview with Johanne Fremmich, current H02 student at Les Roches who gladly agreed to give us feedback about her internship experience. We wanted to find out how involved she was with her role as a trainee at the Hotel Arts Barcelona and as you will see, the results are great and she loved her experience!

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Wine Tasting Festival

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Pamela Calvas

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all having a great week and working hard in your projects/assignments either if you are a current student from Les Roches, part of the Alumni or even a prospective student reading this blog!!

On my side, I can tell you that I feel like time is definitely flying already and as deadlines are approaching I feel the need to work faster and harder. The Hospitality industry is known for this and it is in fact one of the reasons why I selected this field because it has helped me to become more organized and manage time better.

Having said that, I strongly agree that along with the learning, it is always important to have time to learn new things, attend workshops, presentations and see places where they show something new or important from a particular region.

Last Saturday, we had a great opportunity to go to the Sierre Wine Festival, which was a really nice experience for all of us who had never tried wine tasking before. The festival took place in Sierre, which is one of the closest cities to Bluche where Les Roches campus is located. Sierre has about 14,000 inhabitants and in the city you can do some shopping in the many stores, or find restaurants and banks. When you are a student in Bluche, you go there often.

Every year, Sierre becomes the host of the Wine Festival which is really popular in the Valaisan area; for many people foreign and local, it becomes really interesting as several wine makers come to this festival with their products, people attending can pay a small fee for the wine tasting and you receive a wine glass which becomes your tool to try several sorts of wines made by the different grapes produced in the area. The producers from vineyards from the region are happy to explain to you where they are located and if there is any specialty in their wine. It was really interesting!

Check out how it was in the following video where I have posted a few pictures of this day!

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Hitting the Halfway Mark

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Whitney

The month of August has been filled with ups and downs.

For the first two weeks of the month the hotel was extremely busy with just about 100% occupancy and what is normally a quiet, calm place became a bustling hive of activity. As part of my internship package, I stay in one of the rooms of the hotel (I am one of the lucky ones) and because the hotel was so full I spent about 5 days staying in a different room every night and one night off property which was kind of fun but at the end I was glad to be settled in one place.

My major project of this month was to create a presentation on Breakages. At Les Roches when we break things (once I saw a whole stack of plates go down in Market Place) we get reprimanded and told to clean up the mess and life goes on. It changes a bit when the cost of the equipment you’re using is related to the expenses of the department and the profit of your employer and maybe even your staff evaluation at the end of the year. So my task was to make this presentation to see why our team was breaking so much and how we could try to fix those issues.

Cambodia Travels

We had a kind of Management Retreat which I was invited to join. I have to say that it is amusing to watch your managers, who would normally be well dressed in shirts sleeves and black trousers, wearing sports gear and jumping around with a badminton racket and playing volleyball. After we played sports we drove out to East Baray.

A Baray is a manmade lake and this one is part of the complex of Angkor Wat, it is not certain whether they were made for symbolic reasons only or if they were used for irrigation as well. We had lunch on the rice fields and spent a lovely afternoon eating and resting in hammocks.

Baray

The Rice Fields where we had lunch

Local Food

I also had the chance to visit Happy Ranch Horse Farm. It was almost like home and I loved sitting around playing with the horses and dogs and chatting with the stable hands (although I’m not sure they understood any of what I was saying).

www.thehappyranch.com

However, towards the end of the month, near to the 3 month mark I started feeling down. Internships are a lot of fun and can be very exciting but that doesn’t stop you from missing home. It isn’t as though you want to go home immediately but I realized that the whole summer had passed and I, for the first time, was not there with all my friends who were on break. It is something to think about when you choose your internship. As my grandmother would say, it’s “character building”!

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Meeting Les Roches’ Alumni

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Pamela Calvas

So, it is time for an update! The weather has been quite good the last couple of weeks and many activities have been happening lately at the school, I was thinking that this time I would try to summarize a little of what has been going on in the student life, on and off campus.

First of all I would like to mention the successful Alumni meeting that took place last Sunday, on the 20th of August. During this meeting, students from Les Roches were able to interact with the Les Roches Alumni in a Grand Reunion with Les Roches graduates from years 1990 to 1995. These Alumni meetings have been arranged previously but this was the first time only graduates from these years gathered and came to the campus to interact with us. This was a great opportunity for all of us who wanted to find out more about how the opportunities of having studied in Les Roches helped them to enter the real world of hospitality.

Mr. Nicholas Allen, a Les Roches graduate from 1992, and a group of Les Roches Alumni came up with this great idea, along with the help provided by the Les Roches Alumni representatives and the CDIP office (the Career Development and Industry Placement).

We all had a wonderful time accompanied by nice food and soft drinks by the school pool on this Sunday afternoon. Getting acquainted with former students who are now managers of hotels, directors of restaurants, clubs, cruise companies and high representatives of numerous hospitality related companies is really outstanding.

I have to say that it was great to get advice from them, answers to questions that we as students have and just listen to their life experiences in different companies. It was indeed a great opportunity to make contacts for our future career and on behalf of all the students who attended this session, it was a real pleasure to share this with you all and below I have a few pics to share with you!

Brazilian former graduates 1990 – 1995 thanks for the click!!

I also wanted to post a few pics about some activities that some courses like HO2 students (Hotel Operations II) have lately performed. Thanks to Johanne Fremmich for the pics of her and her classmates during the internship fair that they prepared in order for everyone to know more about the hotel they worked in, the activities and the tasks that they performed during their period of internship. This was really a source of information for a lot of students who are starting to apply for internships and training programs. Great work guys!!!

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Welcome to Summer Batch!

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Pamela Calvas

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I last posted blogs and I have really missed it!

After finishing an internship in Geneva, I am returning to Les Roches in order to complete the Postgraduate Program in Hospitality (PGD II). I am positive this semester is going to be amazing for everyone and I really hope the blogs I will write will help current and prospective students to know more about the school and its activities.

First of all, I would like to give a warm welcome to everyone, although by the time this is posted it will already be week 4 … New and returning students have been arriving to Les Roches for summer batch in the last couple of weeks and there have already been a few activities going on.

One of them of course was the Swiss National day that took place on the 1st of August when most students were already on campus. We had the pleasure of seeing the parades in Crans-Montana and afterwards an amazing show of fireworks that lasted around 15 minutes, which was awesome. You could really feel the happiness of Swiss people during this day, I have made a short video about it…

After my internship in Geneva, which I will talk about in my next post, I went back to Ecuador to visit my family and friends, it was a nice break from Europe but I was actually looking forward to coming back to Blûche. Each batch, either Winter or Summer batch, enjoys a special feeling when they come back after an internship period. In the first couple of weeks, it was a feeling of excitement to see everyone again, not only your classmates but also the returning students from last summer batch in different classes, teachers and everyone who helps out at Les Roches.

We all get to share a lot of stories regarding the previous internship and the places we have discovered. All this is real feedback that you get from your friends which is really important because you start building up different criteria concerning future job or internship opportunities that might help you to find the right path in the field of Hospitality which is so broad. I will share some advice and tips in regards to internships from my previous experience in Geneva.

Here a few pictures of new friends and people having already a good time at Les Roches!! I am really happy to be back!