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Student TestimonialBachelor of Business Administration

My profile and background...

My name is Anthony Kranepuhl, 25 years old. I’m of French nationality because I was born near Paris, but my father is German and my mother is Thai. At the age of 4, I moved to Hong Kong, where I attended a French International School learning French and English at the same time.

When I was 13, we moved back to France into our vacation home situated in Normandy. There, I finished high school as a boarding student, obtaining a Scientific Baccalaureate with European Honours.

I began my studies in the medical university, but I discovered that medicine was not for me and I was uncertain about what kind of career I wanted. Luckily for me, I found a summer job and worked with Britanny Ferries (a French ferry company) for 2 months as a waiter, steward, deckman, bellman and housekeeper.

I enjoyed this job so much that I wanted to continue in this field and so I stayed for 2 extra months and started looking for hospitality education for my future career.

My profile and background...

Discovering Les Roches...

Upon my arrival in Bluche, the bright and clear sky greeted me with a breath-taking view of the Swiss Alps (The Matterhorn being smack in the middle)! What stood out most in this hotel school was the friendliness of the students. All of them were smiling, extremely welcoming, and more than helpful when answering all my questions which were non-academic related. It was a great thing to do the visit and getting instant feedback from current students really shows what the school is like from the students’ perspective.

After walking around the school facilities and small village, I was truly impressed by the quality of education Les Roches had to offer, as well as the quality of life. The combination of these factors made me choose Les Roches over another great school.

In September 2006, I decided to visit numerous hotels schools in Switzerland, including EHL and Glion.

Only a few weeks later, I decided to return to Switzerland and visit Les Roches after hearing about it through one of the counsellors of Laureate Hospitality Education.

1st year at Les Roches...

 My Les Roches journey began in January 2007. Teachers and students were very friendly and they offered all the help they could, making you part of the family from day one.

When I was in France during high school, I only had French, German or English friends. Thanks to Les Roches, during that first week, I made friends from South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, United States of America, Venezuela, Kenya and many more.

The next days were spent on trying to find friends that I had only met over the Internet, through Facebook and Myspace.

Once we met, new relationships started to build based on shared knowledge of past experience for those who had any, but mainly on the differences and common values among the nationalities and cultures within our small group of new friends.

1st year at Les Roches...

First semester was a great year where students got together for the first time, using both their practical and academic skills, but also one that is ever so important: team building skills. Being in classes where you need to work together as a group and team is not easy, especially when meeting for the first time. But this is how the world of hospitality is in reality since you won’t choose who you want to work with later on.

Les Roches succeeds in bringing realistic situations to class environments, having both leaders and followers, small and large groups, planning and acting, solving problems as well as relating to human sciences that we never knew or heard of before.

Switching between practical weeks and academic weeks was great. This allowed me to have a bit more time to concentrate on my studies, but the best thing was that I could relate to these courses from the practical experiences. Everything became very logical, and it made sense, like my father used to say “It’s not rocket science”.

This is very true and every day, every week, month and year, everything at Les Roches is logical. At times, things could have been done faster, but the size and logistics of the school mirror the hospitality industry, making students think things through a bit more to perform at 100%.

1st year at Les Roches...

1st Internship; Provence, France

To my exhilaration, after a long week of waiting following a great interview, the Four Seasons Resort Terre Blanche in Southern France decided to grant me an internship for six months at the front desk of their establishment.

Arriving in their high season was not an easy start to learn from this Canadian company, but feeling the buzz of seasonal activity was what I longed for. I was enjoying the great weather of Provence, inhaling the smells of the lavender fields, and most of all, learning from one the best hotel chains of the world.

Throughout those six months, I acquired an entirely new set of skills that I still value today, and I enhanced what I already learned back in Bluche. Meeting alumni from Les Roches working at the Front Desk with me was an honour. This showed me that my decision in 2006 was a good one; that the school I chose has a worldwide reputation and that it stands up to it.

2nd year at Les Roches

Coming back was such a thrill, especially when sharing our experiences with friends and teachers, getting to know the differences from one company to another, as well as the common points that were taught to us throughout our first semester.

But now was the time to wear our new kitchen shoes, figure out how to button our kitchen jackets, and get our coloured scarves to distinguish all those numerous white clean jackets and extremely sharp knives! You learn a lot when chefs are putting your team under pressure; other students are waiting for you to prepare more food, working on getting the final preparations done on time and with a certain aesthetic.

Leaving the kitchen, new classes come to light such as Organizational Behaviour and Accounting. I must admit that dealing with figures was not my favourite subject, but the teachers managed to bring these subjects to a level accessible to many, and even making it fun!

2nd Internship: Here I come, Bora Bora!

Where could I go? I had no clue. After a few emails and a 5 minute phone call, I was about to sign my second contract for a 6 month Management Internship for the pre-opening and opening of the Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora as Guest Services Assistant Manager. French Polynesia!!! I was jumping up and down, and could not wait to get to the other side of the world!

After over 40 hours of travelling time, and having lost my suitcases along the way in Heathrow airport, I finally arrived on a small propeller plane on the island I tend to call Paradise because of its crystal clear, warm blue waters.

The property was amazing, situated on a “Motu” which is a small island on a part of the atoll. Accessible only by boat or by swimming, the resort held 100 over-water bungalows and 7, 2 or 3 bedroom villas. My task was to be in charge of 6 local staff members, who had previous experience in other hotels of the Polynesian area, but none in the international domain, or in the English language.

I learned so much from them, and them from me, teaching them the Opera software that links all outlets and departments together, teaching them the standards of the company, as well as a few words of English everyday. After a few days, I was faced with new challenges. Individuals had different personalities and I had to diversify my way of teaching them the standards and values of the Four Seasons brand. This was complicated, especially when all members of my team were older than me.

22ndnd Internship: Here I come, Bora Bora! Internship: Here I come, Bora Bora!

3rd year at Les Roches

Back in Bluche for the third time now, and as a student in the Management semester. Now we got to understand how to manage the practical areas of food and beverage, as well as the room division area. In addition to this, certain new subjects made their appearance, such as human resources and marketing.

Finally, what a way to end the semester! Les Roches held a graduation ceremony celebrating our achievements and completion of the Swiss Hotel Association Hotel Management Diploma.

Some students decided to end their studies at this point; others continued to do the top-up degree to obtain a Bachelor in Business Administration. Whatever we decided, this was a time to celebrate the three years that we had just spent together, in the Swiss Alps, and celebrate the passage to a bright future for all of us.

3rd year at Les Roches

During this ceremony, students receive either a bronze, silver or gold medal depending on their performances and results from all three semesters.

I managed to achieve a silver medal, but the biggest surprise was the award of the student with the most positive attitude over the three semesters.

Teachers and chefs got together to elect one student with this attitude, and I was the lucky one. This is an award that I carry now on my CV and it will show future employers what I am capable of. Clearly, this award beats by far my silver medal, and is one of my proudest achievements in my three semesters at Les Roches.

As we all know, there is a life after the SHA Diploma, and for me it was to continue for another 2 semesters consecutively in Bluche to complete a BBA Degree in Entrepreneurship.

Final year at Les Roches

We met with new teachers, a great program manager, and all of us felt that the pace of work was brought to a higher level that pushed us to become better students. The new courses focused exclusively on the academic side of the learning process and techniques to become better future managers. The exercises focused on case studies, and trained us to complete projects in short periods of time, hence giving us better time management skills.

  Why didn’t I choose marketing or finance? Well, I figured that after my internships, I really wanted to stay in the hotel industry, and maybe to start up my own business. I believed that the entrepreneurial stream would offer me a perfect balance of subjects to give me a good level of knowledge in both the marketing and financial aspects that any hotel requires from future managers. This was definitely proven to me during the second and final semester of the BBA degree with numerous projects.

The Capstone was the last project of BBA 2 and lasted for 8 days. Luckily for all of us, we had no more classes, and had all the cards in hand to complete it. Our theme for this semester was to be: Budget Hotels. But the wait was not over yet as none of us knew our future group members, which was randomly selected from all three streams, to come up with 5 individuals, trying to balance every single group with at least one member from each stream.

After the first few days of research, and selecting one of the two imposed destinations, it was time to crunch up and start working day in and day out. Honestly speaking, the hours flew by as if we were having a lot of fun. It was quite a struggle as we had to adjust to one another’s pace of work, style of writing, and thought processes. But isn’t this what you get in the real world? You certainly don’t choose your colleagues. We printed our project in one hard copy, but the struggle was still not over yet. There was still a pitch to be done, presenting our business proposal to the “potential investors”, the teachers of various subjects recapping the topics of Capstone.

Initially, the presentations were to last 20 minutes, but as we were one of the last groups to present after a three-day schedule, and because our proposal was well backed up by interesting and important bits of information, our jury pushed us into a questions and answers session for about three quarters of an hour. Once this was over, it felt as if all the pressure just dropped off our shoulders and everything came to a stand still. What a relief!

Final year at Les Roches

Graduation: Les Roches, bye for now

In May of 2010, I received a Bachelor of Business Administration with ‘Honours and Merit’ in the Entrepreneurship stream. It has been a great pleasure to be part of this international school, in such a wonderful part of the world where students from over 90 different nationalities can live and study together.

Today, I am proud of having chosen Les Roches as my pathway to the world of hospitality. This school has given me access to some of the world’s greatest hotels since they come to the school and recruit a certain number of us every semester. Most importantly, the school has helped me develop in both the professional and personal aspects of my life with the great support from teachers, and living with so many different cultures from around the world.

Les Roches International School of Hotel Management

Rue du Lac 118 Phone: +41 (0)21 989 26 44  CH - 1815 Clarens Fax: +41 (0)00 989 26 45 Switzerland E-mail: info@lesroches.edu