The American Hotel & Lodging Educational Foundation (AH&LEF) National Lodging Management Program (LMP) Competition featured the competitive spirit of high school students across the country as they demonstrated their knowledge of the hotel industry.
The not-for-profit affiliate of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) hosted the three-day event at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Fla., to challenge students to the real-life work experiences in a hotel.
Teams of students displaying their proficiency while competing in three contests:
Hotel Operations: Students applied their knowledge in a three-part challenge: room inspections, in which students had 10 minutes to find 10 housekeeping cleaning errors in a typical guestroom using an executive housekeeping checklist; night audit, in which teams manually posted front desk accounting information; and case studies in food and beverage and sales and marketing, in which students had 15 minutes to prepare solutions to case study scenarios.
The Hospitality Project: Teams demonstrated their knowledge, skills, and abilities in event planning. Given a scenario that included budget parameters, students prepared an invitation, banquet event order, menu, and floor plan.
The Knowledge Bowl: Teams demonstrated their knowledge through a question-and-answer 'Jeopardy-style' quiz. Competing teams took turns answering questions until each team had selected five questions.
In all, 11 teams competed, representing schools in Arkansas, Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Washington, and Washington, D.C. Teams from Guam and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were the competition's first participants from outside the continental United States.
The following teams were named national champions, entitling them to scholarships totaling nearly $1 million to the University of Houston, Johnson & Wales University, San Diego State University, and Kendall College:
Overall Winner: First place: Mountain View Academy (Whitefield, N.H.); Second place: Marriott Hospitality High School (Washington D.C.); Third place: Miami Beach High School (Miami Beach, Fla.).
Hotel Operations: First place: Mountain View Academy (Whitefield, N.H.), Second place: Capital Region Career and Tech (Albany, New York); Third place: Bethlehem Area Vo-Tech (Bethlehem, Penn.).
Hospitality Project: First place: Miami Beach High School (Miami Beach, Fla.); Second place: Mountain View Academy (Whitefield, N.H.); Third place: West Sound Technical Skills Center (Bremerton, WA).
Knowledge Bowl: First place TIE: Marriott Hospitality High School (Washington, D.C.) and Mountain View Academy (Whitefield, N.H.); Third place: North Myrtle Beach High School (Myrtle Beach, SC).
'The competition creates a fun and challenging educational program for students interested in working in the lodging industry. With more than 550 high schools that have implemented LMP, we're well on our way toward equipping future lodging employees with the various skill sets they will need to be successful in the lodging industry' said AH&LA President/CEO Joseph A. McInerney, CHA.
LMP is a national educational program for high school juniors and seniors. Topics covered in the program include lodging management, front office and housekeeping management, leadership skills, marketing and sales, and food and beverage service. Through internships, students can explore the wide variety of job opportunities open to them in the hotel industry.
Event sponsors included Sealy, Inc., Hcareers, and BMI, Inc. Companies that donated products to the event included BMI, Inc., Geiger Cribbons, Smith Travel, Staples, Sanso Foods, Verizon, and Sysco.
For more information about LMP, contact AH&LEF Vice President of State Relations & Educational Programs Faye Gayes at (407) 999-8160 or fgayes@ei-ahla.org. For 2007 event sponsorship information, contact AH&LA Director of Business Development Brad Aldrich at (202) 289-3154 or baldrich@ahla.com. Also, visit AH&LEF's Web site at www.ahlef.org and the LMP Web site at www.lodgingmanagement.org.
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