Hospitality and Business English Teaching Reform: In Search of Quality Communication and Professional Excellence

Introduction

In recent years, research studies and professional experience in the hospitality business clearly indicate that perceptions of hotel service quality are increasingly being determined by the quality of the guest’s experience during the relatively brief face-to-face interaction with service staff in service encounters, a tendency that is particularly the case in the context of up-market hospitality establishments (Leung & Lo, 1996). In other words, the ever-changing hospitality industry yearns for “a personal touch”. This new “human face” of the hospitality industry is best seen in the professional excellence of passionate and flexible employees.

At the outset, Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) realized the importance of excellence and has offered university-level education of hospitality management for ambitious students seeking top careers in the international hospitality industry. This belief that professional excellence is the result of combining skills and knowledge, with passion and human relationships, has remained the cornerstone of EHL educational philosophy.

Beijing Hospitality Institute (BHI) is an EHL-certified hospitality institute. The program in BHI follows the educational philosophy of EHL—a balance of the science and the art of learning. It is the mission of ESP instructors to facilitate them in achieving professional excellence in English. In BHI, over the years, we have worked at the forefront of formulating Hospitality and Business English Teaching Reform programs, involving a number of courses (Business English for Hospitality, Practical English Writing, Cross-cultural Communication at Work, etc.), and put them into practice based on the BHI’s learning philosophy of practice-based approach and learning for application.