Student projects are a win-win for both students and clients – Hotel Sveitsi

In the spring of 2018, Hotel Sveitsi implemented two projects with Laurea: a Finnish-language one and an international one. The objective of both projects was to commercialise the hotel’s operations for both local customers and visitors from elsewhere. Kaisu Eronen, Hotel Sveitsi’s HR and sales manager, was the contact person in the projects and was very happy with the implementation of both. Communication primarily took place between the project manager and Eronen, but in the joint meetings, the entire team had the opportunity to demonstrate their competence. The diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise of the project team members created an extensive knowledge base for the shared work. The projects were win-win situations. The students could demonstrate and deepen their competence. We received lots of new ideas and valuable information about what hotel visitors wanted. The students provided new, external perspectives. Their social media competence is stronger and they know more about the social media etiquette than us, which was also very useful.

In addition to commercialisation, the goal of the Finnish-language project was to design a one-stop shop to facilitate purchasing. The project team designed and implemented a survey for the customers of Hotel Sveitsi that aimed to map their service reservation experiences and interest in service packages. The objective of the international project was to enter the Russian market and to raise awareness of the services among Russian tourists. The international project team included students from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and they provided a different perspective to the project. Russian tourists are a large customer group around Christmas. The project team members gave us good insider tips on how to raise the interest of Russian tourists and to take them into consideration even better as our guests.

Hotel Sveitsi had previously worked together with other universities of applied sciences and that, together with Eronen’s own teaching experience, motivated the hotel to start cooperation with Laurea as well. Eronen is satisfied with both projects and optimistic about continued cooperation. “Both projects were a very positive experience, and we could absolutely work together with Laurea in other projects as well”, Eronen summarises and smiles.

Kaisu Eronen was interviewed by
Venla Korhonen