A hotel school as a factor of a hotel's resource potential development: opportunities of and challenges to creation

The article deals with the challenges which Russian hotel-industry-specific higher education faces and which significantly undermine the education's competitiveness in the educational service market in Europe and worldwide. The author identifies the key aspects of personnel training that the author sees as requiring a competition-driven revision. The research undertaken by the author has allowed him to formulate the possible solutions to the problem of low hotel resource potential. The implementation of the solutions is based on the creation of a competitive hotel-management-specific HE institution in Russia The author pays particular attention to such problems as insufficient emphasis on application, which become apparent given the employers' readiness to provide traineeship programs for HE students; inadequate linguistic skills the students acquire in industry-specific HE institutions, which frustrates the purposes of training that is focused on communication with foreign guests; and, finally, the status value of the students of Russian HE institutions. In the author's opinion, the problems can be solved through a creation of a new competitive HE institution which will provide high-quality linguistic training, will put emphasis on application, and will collaborate with top regional employers in terms of traineeship programs and recruitment on graduation. The whole educational process in such an institution is to be provided in English, be employer-hotel-based, and guarantee employment in the employer-hotels through a system of graduate-placement or a system of industry-commission. At the transition stage, the solutions can be implemented in the context of an existing industry-specific HE institution.