A Win-Win Relationship Between Horseshoe Bay Resort and Texa Tech University: Part I

By -
Over the years, Horseshoe Bay Resort, a Marriott franchised property, and the RHIM (Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management) program at Texas Tech University has built a close and win-win relationship. On one hand, the resort hotel hires about 25 RHIM students in the summer and a couple interns in the fall and spring to meet its temporary needs in staffing. On the other hand, RHIM students at Texas Tech can gain valuable first-hand operation experience in the resort hotel. How does this relationship work?

Today, I am travelling with two RHIM professors to the Texas Hill Country and learn more about Horseshoe Bay Resort and the students’ work. These professors are Dr. Shane Blum, Chairperson of the Nutrition, Hospitality, and Retailing Department, and Dr. Charlie Adams, Director of Career Center in the College of Human Sciences.

Horseshoe Bay Resort is located in the Texas Hill Country, about 45 minutes away from Austin and 90 minutes from San Antonio. Next to Horseshoe Bay, there are Marble Falls and Fredericksburg, which is a small German-influenced town. The resort has 385 bedrooms, of which 117 are suites and villas. Many of these rooms oversee the gorgeous Lake LBJ and the Texas Hill Country. It has more than 51,000 square feet meeting space and multiple restaurants. The resort also operates three Championship Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Golf courses, full service Marina with pontoon boat, jet-ski, and ski-boat rentals, Bayside Spa, Fitness Center, and a Private Jet Center.

Like most resort destinations, Horseshoe Bay often experiences high and low seasons and may have temporary needs in staffing. Tomorrow, I will meet with some managers and the RHIM students who are doing internships in the resort. I look forward to sharing their experience with you.

References:
The official website of Horseshoe Bay Resort: http://www.horseshoebaymarriott.com/
* The pictures (from the top to the bottom) show: a pool next to the hotel, a corner of the hotel lobby, and the reception area. If you are interested in seeing more pictures of the resort, please visit my Facebook page via www.facebook.com/linchi.kwok

Popular posts from this blog

Convenience over Class: Serving Vino in Cans (by Kristen Rinck)

By -
Image
A recent trend has emerged in the beverage industry that pinpoints a change in attitude and behavior in consumers. Want to find out what this new trend is? Next time you are at a grocery store, walk down the wine aisle and look for something out of the ordinary. Between all of the wine bottles, something different will pop out: wine cans. It now seems that beer is not the only alcoholic beverage sold in cans. Within the past year, the creation and consumption of canned wine have greatly increased. In fact, canned wine sales have more than doubled in the past year, according to a Business Insider study.  The study showed that sales of canned wine reached up to a revenue of $6.4 million in 2015 and so far to $14.5 million in 2016. Although canned wine currently only makes up about 1% of the market, the growth rate is rapidly climbing, comments Sommelier, Andrew Jones. 

The idea of canned wine only began a few years ago. Andrew Jones, who started Field Recordings winery in Paso Robles, Ca…
Read more

2017 hotel trends: Some indications from AHLA 2016 Lodging Survey

By -
Image
Recently, the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) and Smith Travel Research (STR) released the "2016 Lodging Survey." The goal of this biennial survey is to provide a current and comprehensive understanding of hotel operations, with the possibility of identifying the critical travel trends heading into 2017. The survey covers a wide range of areas. I highlighted the key findings from the survey on Multibriefs.com, but here is a brief summary: TechnologyAlmost all hotels across various chain scales (from luxury to economy hotels) adopt central reservation systems (94-100 percent).More hotels are using mobile apps for customer service, including checking-in into a hotel. 98 percent of hotels offer high-speed in-room internet service with wireless access, with fewer hotels charging for the service. Fewer hotels are using social networking sites for marketing purposes, dropping from 93 percent in 2014 to 87 percent in 2016. Additional discussions for consideration: Repla…
Read more

Public Relations and Social Media (by Marlon Wong Granados)

By -
Image
“Every business interacts with a variety of publics: consumers, the general public, the financial community, the organizations’ employees, government, the media, suppliers, and many others. Public relations is the process by which the relationships with each to these publics is managed.” --- Reid and Bojanic, in Hospitality Marketing Management (2010, p. 492).

Just recently at my workplace, there was an incident regarding one of my coworkers. It turns out that he used Facebook’s personal messaging system as a medium to exchange harsh words with another person. This person was not in any way connected to our company, but after finding out where my coworker worked through my coworker’s Facebook profile, this person decided to post on our company’s public Facebook profile what my coworker had said to them for anyone to see. It appeared that my coworker said things that were not nice; and even though he thought he was having a private conversation via personal messaging with this person, t…
Read more