Airlines are focus of 80th Hotel Ezra Cornell

By Courtney Potts '06

Today through Sunday (April 7-10), Cornell's Statler Hotel will welcome approximately 300 VIPs from the hospitality industry, many of whom are returning School of Hotel Administration alumni. The occasion? The 80th Annual Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC).

The event, in which current Hotel School undergraduates take full responsibility for running the Statler, gives students a chance to demonstrate their culinary skills and business acumen for some of the top names in the industry. Hotel School students begin planning for the weekend a year in advance, and it is traditionally the high point of the academic year for them. This year, which marks the program's 80th anniversary, is sure to be no exception.

Michelle Ho '05, marketing director for this year's HEC, describes it as "a conference that is part educational, part entertainment and part networking and socializing." It features presentations by industry experts, lavish lunches and dinners, a deliciously decadent-sounding wine and chocolate celebration and plenty of opportunities for both the students and the school to shine -- including research project presentations and an annual awards banquet. According to Ho, this year for the first time the school also will be showcasing the new Robert A. and Jan M. Beck Center, which opened in October 2004. The 35,000-square-foot addition has a dramatic three-story atrium and much-welcomed teaching space, including a large lecture hall and classrooms for small-group discussions, all equipped with state-of-the-art technology.

A highlight of this year's conference will be an appearance by David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue Airways. Neeleman, who was named one of the Top 10 Entrepreneurs of 2000 by Business Week magazine, will be speaking at "Flying High for Years to Come?," a panel discussion on the future of the airline industry and its likely affect on the hospitality industry. The panel, which takes place Friday morning, April 8, in the revamped Alice Statler Auditorium, also will feature Paul Foley, president, CEO and director, MAIR Holdings Inc.; Dan Garton, executive vice president of marketing, AMR Corporations and American Airlines Inc.; John Riordan, vice president of customer services, Virgin Atlantic Airways, North America; and Alfred Kahn, the Robert Julius Thorne Professor of Political Economy emeritus at Cornell.

Another of this year's events that is sure to be highly "satisfactual" is a presentation Friday afternoon by two executives from Walt Disney Imagineering, also in Alice Statler auditorium. Martin Sklar, vice chairman and principal creative executive, and Wing T. Chao, vice chairman of Asia Pacific development and executive vice president of master planning, architecture and design, will speak on the past, present and future of development at the Walt Disney World Resort.

Other presentation topics will include hospitality planning and design, the growing trend toward eating out instead of cooking at home and the results of a research project conducted by Hotel School faculty and graduate students in which Statler Hotel guests were given cameras and asked to photograph the aspects of the hotel that made an impression on them during their stay.

Hotel Ezra Cornell dates to 1925, when then-Hotel School Dean Howard Meek traveled with Cornell students to New York City to manage the Hotel Astor for a day. On returning to campus, the students decided to hold a "hotel for a day" at Cornell and invited industry pioneers to Ithaca to see the university's fledgling hotel administration program. The first Hotel Ezra Cornell was held in May of 1926 at Risley Hall. Among the first guests was renowned hotelier E.M. Statler, who saw the benefit of hospitality education and donated the funds to construct the first Statler Hall and Statler Hotel. Every year since then, Cornell Hotel School students have carried the tradition forward, with the event's emphasis changing with the times.

A fee is charged to attend Hotel Ezra Cornell. For more information on this year's HEC, visit http://www.hotelezracornell.com.

Courtney Potts is a student intern with Cornell News Service.