Pablo Garcia, Hospitality News, ET HospitalityWorld | So Good News

For Pablo Garcia, director of the global project Spark at the Les Roches Global Hospitality School at the Les Roches-Cranes-Montana campus in the Swiss Alps, the program leader, the three-year-old innovation platform cannot be seen in isolation. The very DNA of Le Roche.

According to Garcia, applied learning is at the core of the institute, and Spark is fully in line with that ethos. Hospitality institutes around the world place a strong emphasis on applied learning, he says.

Speaking to ET HospitalityWorld on the sidelines of the third Spark Innovation Sphere Summit held at Les Roches Crans-Montana campus, Garcia said that “digital transformation” is integral to the sustainability and success of any industry in the world and is the brainchild of Spark. ‘ is to create future leaders who can lead from the front to bring about this transformation.

According to him, being a part of the service industry, success, advancement depends on the continuous delivery of customer experience by the hospitality business. Price won’t be a factor in losing customers, but it would be a bad customer experience in the future, he said.

He explained that as a hospitality institute, it is not about creating new technologies, but working closely with technology companies to help create solutions for the hospitality industry to improve the customer experience.

In the past three years, the Spark centers at the Crans-Montana and Marbella campuses have worked on more than 100 corporate projects, 80 different companies, more than 30 tests and about two dozen innovations, he said. “It’s been a very successful model where students create academic programs that work with companies to create companies and solutions,” he said.

According to him, Spark is an absolute win for both corporates and students. According to him, students who participate in Spark projects will benefit from Blockchain, AI, Robotics, IoT, etc. communication skills etc. will provide an opportunity to work with future hospitality leaders who understand the value of digital transformation for corporate entities, he says.

“Innovation is about doing something different, better and repeatable,” he said when asked about the scope of Spark’s projects beyond the hospitality sector. According to him, all customer-centric and customer-service-oriented industries are part of Spark innovation and they have included mobility companies, railways, hyperloops, etc. in the last three years. worked with cutting clients.

“Many of our students join the hospitality industry. But they are also in demand in many consumer-facing sectors,” he added.

That’s why, Garcia says, the goal is to expose students to different projects so they get a fair idea of ​​how the same technology interacts in different sectors and contexts.

The Les Roches Crans-Montana campus has created a Spark Hospitality digital center consisting of four spaces that have been completely redesigned. Two of them are designed to facilitate collaboration and creativity: the Development Center and the Incubation Center. The other two serve as experimental laboratories: a media center for communication and a testing center for virtual reality projects.

At the Spark Innovation Sphere Summit, Les Roche will showcase some of the cutting edge innovation projects, including RoboBarista, hologram related projects, mobile access control systems and more. showed.

“Our innovations are not designed to destroy people, but to enhance the customer experience in the hospitality ecosystem,” explained Garcia.

About 100 hospitality and technology experts attended the third Spark Innovation Sphere Summit to discuss the impact of new technologies on traditional hospitality. During the event, speakers from the hospitality technology industry shared insights and discussed how certain technologies such as AI, robotics, VR, holograms, Web3 and others are changing the hospitality industry, especially to improve customer experience and revenue.