142 – Hospitality Campus Crawl: Florida Atlantic University

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

Join the Suite Spot in this episode of TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl featuring Florida Atlantic University!

FAU Professor, Dr. Peter Ricci, joins the episode to shine a light on the FAU hospitality program and tells viewers why it is one-of-a-kind and how it prepares its students for success in the hospitality industry.

Episode Transcript
Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, and this is the second part of our TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl series. If this is your first time listening to this brand new summer series, we just launched this, we’ve talked about it before. Right now we’re going through somewhat of a staffing shortage. We’re gonna get into that a little bit into this episode. But what we’re trying to accomplish with this particular series is talk to the people and places that are educating and preparing the next generation of hoteliers, the next generation of hospitality workforce. So, very excited to just move a little on up I 95 North to Boca Raton. Im a bring in my next Suite Spot guest, clinical professor and director Dr. Peter Ricci of FAU’s Hospitality and Tourism Management program. Dr. Ricci, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot today.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
Great. Nice to be here. Thank you. So I started sitting back here so you can see my lovely FAU owl. Now I can, move in a little bit. Thanks for having me. I love to see you and I know you’re a Rosen grad. I did my doctorate there, so it’s great, great to spend some time with you.

Ryan Embree:
Well, you have, you’ve got such an extensive and unique journey and, and I was talking to you off camera, how about that is one of my favorite things about our industry is, you know, sometimes our hospitality journeys take us all over the world. Sometimes we fall into hospitality as a career. Typically we meet a couple mentors along the way. And for your particular journey, you’ve been kind of in and out of academia. Share with our audience a little bit about your journey and the path that led you to FAU.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
You know it’s interesting that I’m spending time with you today. Yesterday was 47 years since I moved to Florida. So I moved here as a little boy and tourism was a part of my life growing up. Always. because we had visited here first. My family also was in California, so we spent a lot of time traveling. And I’ve always had a love and passion for meeting people and traveling. But as a boy, you don’t realize that. You just think Florida’s cool because you can swim all the time and you can go play. And so my experience here growing up in middle and high school was fantastic. And, um, I started working as a teenager in a fine dining restaurant and happened to have an absolute amazing mentor who was a self-made millionaire and owned fine dining restaurants all over South Florida. And this was in the eighties when fine dining was all the rage with the flambe, tableside and fancy cocktails before they were called craft cocktails. And he was all about guest service. And of course I didn’t know what that meant at that time. He was just instilling me like an etiquette. I’m kind of a casual guy, but I wouldn’t say kind of, I’m a casual guy. I don’t like suits and ties, but I’m all about treating people with the utmost respect, welcoming them, feeling warmly about hospitality and inviting you into my environment. So hospitality was like a natural thing for me. Undergrad, I worked food and beverage all through college. I fell in love with what they call trip directing, where you would go on a trip as the liaison to the conference or the convention or the incentive group where they’re rewarding some travelers. And so I just had this passion for travel, thought I would go to law school, got in, didn’t like my first week. I didn’t even give it a chance. And, uh, wound up just doing my grad degree in tourism and recreation and parks and being in there ever since. I think my favorite part was the hotel side of my career, but I actually liked them all. I worked for Delta for about six months after my undergrad. That was the most rigorous, intensive, uh, interview process I’ve ever had in my life. I think I had seven or eight interviews plus an hour with a psychiatrist plus aptitude tests. I mean, it was an incredible thing to work at Delta Airlines in the eighties. And that experience to this day has helped me refine how I recruit and finding genuine hospitality people. So, you know how I wound up here. I wound up doing my doctorate at UCF University of Central Florida when the Rosen School was created. We didn’t say Rosen School for long. It became Rosen College shortly thereafter. ’cause we grew so quickly. But when Harris Rosen so generously offered dollars to create the Rosen School, they were looking for a lodging professor. And I had been teaching part-time, what we call adjunct teaching for more than a decade. And every place I opened a hotel or I would babysit a gm, a general manager or whatever the case was, I would teach while I was living in that community. So I thought I had thought about doing a doctorate, but not really too much. But I did it and I taught at Rosen at the same time for about five years. Um, and then I went back to hotels and I was very happily back doing regional work in the southeast. And FAU asked me to adjunct. I fell in love with it here, and I’ve been here ever since. I think I’ve been here since 2007. So I’m not really good at math. I’m a typical hospitality guy, so a long time. But I love it. And the reason I liked it here and I came here is that we’re in the business school model. So our curriculum’s rather rigorous. And I felt that’s what I was missing in my own journey because I have a bachelor’s in sociology. My master’s is in recreational studies, which is tourism, recreation and parks. And I didn’t get the quantitative training at the University of Florida that I should have because I hated my accounting class. Then I’m thrust into my first hotel job. I worked at Convention Bureau for a couple years, but my first hotel job as director of sales, they were throwing the star report at me and I had never heard of it. I didn’t know how to do data analytics, you know, so I had to learn all that on the fly. So I know it’s a long answer to your question, but I have a quantitative side, but prefer my hospitality side. And I think the future leaders of this industry need both now.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. They do. And, and we’re gonna talk about how you and FAU are preparing that hospitality workforce to have that well-rounded experience before going into hospitality. Because you absolutely do and the trends are ever changing. But before we kind of talk about that, you know, I wanna go back to the beginning of your story. And I think it’s so fascinating when people talk about, because we are in an industry that we experienced before, we’re in the workforce, right? We’re travelers before we work in hospitality. And a lot of those childhood memories might be traveling to that hotel and having that magical experience. And it’s cool to be on the other side now to be able to offer that to people and know that maybe it’s that one hotel experience meeting a GM or a DOS at a property could inspire them on the road to hospitality. And that’s kind of what this is all about. But, you know, from that to where we are today and people that do choose hospitality or what we’ve heard is a lot of people fall into hospitality and we’re trying to change that narrative. We want people to think of hospitality as a career because it is such an amazing industry, as you’ve pointed out with so many opportunities. Share a little bit about FAU’s background and the program that you have at the Hospitality and Tourism program and what it kind of makes it unique maybe from other programs in the state or even the country.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
You know, the most unique feature is our location and in hospitality it’s location, location, location. Well, when I grew up here in south Florida, FAU was a rather young university. It was started in the 1960s and originally it was going to be part of the state university system, the SUS our model for the upper division. So you would go to a two year school now called state colleges, sometimes community colleges, and then you would come to FAU. So in high school, several of my friends wanted to go to FAU because IBM was headquartered here at that time, but they had to go to Broward College first. At that time called Broward Community College. I went away to University of Florida because I didn’t want to go to Broward College immediately and keep my same job. I wanted to try something else. Well, long behold, that two plus two model in the state university system never really materialized. And FAU became a four year school later on. But in my mind, it was not on my radar even though I had grown up here, if that makes sense. Fast forward later in life, they were building a hospitality program. I had the pleasure to get hired at University of Central Florida Rosen when we had 83 students. And I helped build the main campus up when we built the Rosen College and opened it near SeaWorld. And in the midst of iDrive and all the attractions, we were already up to about 1200 or 1300 students. My job was teaching the intro to hospitality courses at main campus and kind of orchestrating main campus to get hospitality awareness where we all started initially and make sure they kept going to the new building. And so I had an office at both of them. And what I liked about Rosen was the living laboratory of the environment. And what I like in particular about FAU is our environment here. Our location is probably the most unique you’ll find in the state. There are more private country clubs within a 30 mile radius of FAU, we’ve run estimates, and I think anywhere on the planet. We have the super high end resorts, yet we have very successful entrepreneurs who own 10 properties and do Airbnb. We have every level of restaurant you could imagine. We have yacht clubs, we have charter fishing entrepreneurs, we have casinos, we have cruise line headquarters, we have Expedia, we have everything. So the affluent Boca Raton community, which is one of the most affluent in the United States, provides this wealth of visitors and this wealth of a training lab to work in. And I look back to where I grew up in south Florida, about 20 minutes from where I’m sitting now. And that’s why I have this guest service inclination was because of the grooming I had in the high level of restaurants that I worked at. But I’ve carried that level of service to every type of environment, whether it was a casual Holiday Inn, an upscale intercontinental, whatever it was. And so I think our living laboratory location makes us probably the best anywhere. I mean, Miami and all its nightlife and success is within 45 minutes. You’ve got the wealth of Palm Beach and the world class breakers and Palm Beach and Four Seasons Palm Beach within 40 minutes the other way. And I see it in our students and our alumni. My alumni are more successful here in a shorter time than anywhere I’ve taught as an adjunct or a full-time. And when I was a hotel general manager and a regional vice president, I had the privilege to adjunct all over the place where we were opening properties. So in Tampa and Tallahassee at FSU and Gainesville, at UF and Miami at FIU I’ve taught all around and I was able to feel the vibe and feel the curriculum as a hotel employee, as a hotelier who was looking to not only teach part-time, but also to recruit. So I haven’t found anything like FAU, I think there’s probably a similar vibe in amenities and opportunities at FIU and Florida Gulf Coast, because Florida Gulf Coast has the affluent resorts and country clubs, but we’re all uniquely different. So that’s my long-winded tell you that it’s comes back to the old saying that you hear time and time again. Location, location, location.

Ryan Embree:
Well, what a benefit for the students to have almost an incubator right outside your classroom doors. Right? It’s almost an extension of the hospitality program. And we’re gonna talk about that, about how those relationships, and we talked about this on a previous episode, how it’s a really a win-win for everyone. I mean, the businesses that wanna hire from your university because of the programs and initiatives and coursework that you’re doing there sets them up perfectly. They’re familiar with the area. It’s truly a win-win. But you offer a number to match your experience. Dr. Ricci, you offer a number of certifications that not just students, but hospitality professionals can enroll in. And you know, some of these, I’ve actually heard firsthand, that you did these during the pandemic, which was very gracious of you and at a time when our industry especially was struggling. So thank you for that. Can you share a little bit about these programs and the importance of continuing education in our industry?

Dr. Peter Ricci :
Sure. You know, there’s a movement, and it’s been occurring for probably 30 years, where the value of a higher education degree has been questioned by many people. Is it worth the money? Should I get a bachelor’s? Is bachelor’s the only immediate pathway to a financial success? And historically, I mean, I grew up in the lower middle class family on government aid. So University of Florida was way outta my reach. If I didn’t get financial aid or scholarship, I never would’ve gone to University of Florida. And University of Florida and all our state schools in Florida are very inexpensive tuition wise. But you’re still gonna spend $10,000 to $80,000 whatever it takes, and is it worthwhile? So certificates and certifications over the past decade have become more and more popular. And then during covid, they just exploded. What I tell people now is buyer beware, you know, whatever the saying is, because you have to really know what the content is. Is it someone who just threw a certificate together and put it out there to profit, et cetera. At FAU, we have had a certificate since I came here many, many years ago. We used to do it in person. And it’s about lifelong learning. So there, the majority of our workforce is probably not going to pursue a bachelor’s. That’s probably 20% to 25% if I were to guess. So what about the 80% or the 70% or 60% that don’t do it? Well, they still need training. They need to feel engaged. They need to feel part of an industry. They need to learn how to do their jobs better. So certificates and certifications became an amazing way to get educated without the expense and the time of a formal degree. Now you think about the myriad ways you can study now online, in person, hybrid mixed modes. So a bachelor’s degree will always be there. It’s always important for those that want it. And it should be your own goal. It’s not a necessary ingredient to success. It helps you create your own discipline and time management. It helps expand your mind and helps you think across different ways of thinking and different subjects. But I wouldn’t say it’s the necessary roadmap to success. Now, having said that, do I feel that my undergraduate and MBA graduates are better prepared for their hospitality jobs? Absolutely. So if you know that you wanna be a chemical engineer, by all means do your bachelor’s in chemical engineering, you know that you wanna work for Hilton or JetBlue or one of the super high number of businesses in our field, get a business degree or better yet, get a business combination hospitality degree. So you’re prepared. Because going back to what you said earlier about our industry, we are a business. So I teach my faculty members here, we teach the business of hospitality. It doesn’t matter if you’re gonna go into accounting or finance, maybe you want to, you like playing with data and you’re gonna go, you’re gonna become the best revenue optimizer that exists. Maybe you are creative and you want to go into architecture and design and do new builds. There’s a job for everybody. So hospitality’s not really a silo thing. It’s everything. It’s marketing, it’s it’s communication, it’s graphic design, it’s travel planning. It’s entrepreneur more, more millionaire entrepreneurs come from hospitality space than any other. And every time I say that, that’s a fact that Carol Dover gave me a long time ago. She’s the president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant Lodging Association. If you think about that, it’s common sense. You’ve got Disney, you’ve got McDonald’s, you’ve got Boley, you’ve got all the brand names. Somebody created Target, somebody created Walmart, somebody created all these, and I lump everything, retail services, hospitality. But what underlies that is you need some business then because we still need to operate at a profit. So that’s kind of what we teach and how we teach, is being the best darn service provider you can be. Whether you’re gonna be a financial planner, whether you’re gonna work for Hilton Hotels and your path is a general manager, or whether you wanna open a chain of travel agencies, you know that it still requires the ingredients of business mixed with service acumen, if that makes any sense.

Ryan Embree:
It absolutely does. And I think that last answer I would clip and really show any perspective student. And we’re gonna actually tap you for some advice later on for some students. But for anyone that’s thinking about getting into to hospitality, I think what you just said over the last couple minutes perfectly describes why we love this industry. And I think certifications and certificates are a great way to just dabble into it as well and see if this is the right path for you, if it’s something that you show interest in. But you know, I would say to any hoteliers, hotel management companies that are, are listening to this, go to your frontline staff right now and ask what those college degrees and might not necessarily be hospitality. So even if you’re a student out there not on the hospitality track, you could find yourself in hospitality, which a lot of people do. And this education, this furthering education really comes into play there as Dr. Ricci’s talking about. So yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
And we’re just a fun business. I mean, why not do finance at Royal Caribbean Cruise line? And you know, no offense to my friends who work at banks, but rather than a boring bank or you know, why not do marketing for a zip line company? One of my MBA grads is now working for a cannabis dispensary that’s the largest in Florida, and he has an MBAA bachelor’s in marketing MBA with marketing and hospitality. And it was his service skills and his creativity that got him that job that he loves. So we teach the business of service and that applies to whatever the heck you’re gonna work in. I don’t care if you’re gonna own salons, if you wanna own your own piece to pizza brand, whatever it is, you still need business and you need people skills.

Ryan Embree:
They are such transferable skills. I mean, the old thing that everyone says is, oh, I’m gonna make my kids work in the service industry for a couple years to know what, what it’s like to be on the other side of that. There’s something to that, right? To serve people, whether it’s a restaurant working in a hotel, it just gives you those skills that that will stick with you. It gets you a different perspective and that’s what this is about. That’s what my next question’s about, because this series really has opened my eyes to the innovative ways today. I mean, I graduated more than a decade ago, and you know, I felt like it was, it was really well done at that time. But now the hands-on experience that, that these educators are giving students labs, like you talked about real world experience. Can you give me any examples of, of this within FAU’S curriculum of getting students out there and getting their hands on hospitality?

Dr. Peter Ricci :
Oh my God, that’s what we do best. Another reason we thrive. In order to get tenured in the university system, you must be a good researcher. But even my solid researchers have to have industry experience. So my entire cadre of faculty members, I could put them at a hotel and we would make a profitable. So I have a foodie, I have an analytics person, I have a sustainability person, you name it, right? So it comes from the people you hire. And I had the pleasure to build Rosen from ground up until I left and from here, from ground up until now. So I’ve been able to be very picky. And just like my interviews with Delta, I was very picky. Now the student feedback we get shows that the pickiness goes a long way because they love them, they learn from them. So I am all about experiential learning because if you can’t feel this business and know what it entails, then I don’t want you saying you’re gonna major in it. Right? So our first step was our internship requirement. Instead of what I had to do at the University of Florida, which I did not really find valuable. It was my senior year, I had to spend this is graduate school, not even undergrad. I had to spend a full semester, pay full tuition for 12 credit hours and go work for Marriott Hotels for $10 an hour. Now, at this point in my life, I was 22, I started working at 14 pretty much full time. I had at least seven years equivalent. I did not need to go to a place that would have a checklist every week where the boss would tell me, you fill it out, you put perfect, you fax it. Yes, faxing. because we didn’t have the camera phone then, right? So I found that very useless. So later in life when I wound up here, I said, we are in a living laboratory in Boca Raton. We have campuses in Jupiter, we have campuses in Davie and just outside Fort Lauderdale, we have downtown Fort Lauderdale. Our students are working. So I want them to go out and work in any job that they wanna try to see if the industry resonates with them. And that was our first step is you can either do an old school style internship or you can go out and get a job and count those hours as long as you show me progressive growth. You started as a server, then you became a team lead, and so on. Or you started at a travel agency and then you switched to a cruise line call center because you felt that’s what you learned in the travel agency best. And that’s what you wanna do. That’s fine. So our work requirement here is an initial point that differentiates us and our typical student graduates with about 3000 hours. Which if you’re, if you’re not sure, that’s a year and a half of full-time equivalency. So I know you’ve dealt with difficult South Florida guests or our online students. Wherever you’re living, you’ve dealt with guests there and you wanna still be in this business and you love it. So that’s a first hurdle. The second thing about experiential learning is and I drive my faculty members a little nuts, so with this, but I am, I have a requirement that everything we do resonates with finding your passion, finding your job, and getting your job getting your career off the ground, right? So this week we have a club management class that’s going to Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club. It’s a reclass requirement. You have to interview with the eight other clubs that are there just to practice your interview skills. And you talk to the club people, what do you like about your job? What do you hate about your job? What is fascinating? How much money can I make? What’s your day to day? And you get out of the building and you go play and you have an experience, a lunch, a tour at a world class yacht club. And you say, okay, that’s for me. That’s maybe not, maybe yes. Then we have Harris Casino, same thing full night of tour, meet and greet with the president, meet the VP of finance, tour the casino floor. What does a slot technician do? What does a player’s club attendant do? Or an agent, what does a casino host do? And so we do clubs, we do hotels. We have Sonesta day coming up in September. We have a day in the life co-president this year and next of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International. We have a South Florida chapter. We created what’s called A Day in the Life. They go to the north to Palm Beach. Last year they went to the south to the Carion Miami Beach Wellness Resort. And they spend a day in the life. What does it mean you’re a revenue manager? What does it mean you’re a catering sales manager? What does it mean a BEO, banquet event order? So part of our uniqueness is these opportunities, and I can’t tell you, we invite all students, whether you’re enrolled in that particular class section or not. The feedback from students about finding their calling is incredible. And I attribute this to the fact that I have a sociology, broad thinking as my inherent degree at my undergrad. And I did my master’s in recreation, parks and tourism. So I look at tourism as a big potential business. So you could be a tour operator, you could work for an airline. I have a student right now, he’s a captain of his own fishing boat. Well, he’s in the process of buying his fishing boat. He’s learning from me as a marketing major and a hospitality minor, how to start networking with the hoteliers to do his tours for the guests. And so I just approach everything as this big great industry that we are. I’m sorry, I’m so passionate. I go way off of your question, but that’s what we do different. We get you out, you experience and you succeed. And if you come to me six months in and you’re like, Ricci, you know what, I’m fine going back to school to be a veterinarian. I’m like, great. Then take the guest service class where you’re gonna treat your clients and your people and your patients better human and feline and canine because you need those skills. But now, yeah, go to vet school. I’ll leave you with this one on this. I had a guy who took intro to hospitality with me. He was a biology major here. He was dead set on going to the University of Florida for pharmacy school. I said, what are you doing in a hospitality class? And he said, you know, taking his elective, I’m in love with this. I said, you know what, take my guest service class and take anything else related to your patient client service area. And he’s now been a district manager with CVS in Targets for a decade as a pharmacist with his pharmacy doctorate. And he still uses his people skills every day so that his pharmacy collection outperforms the others in his district. And that’s hospitality.

Ryan Embree:
That is the foundation of a hospitality DNA. We’ve heard that term a lot when hospitality is in your DNA. It’s a perfect transition into talking about FAU and its alumni and a network because when you prepare students like that, you give them those experiences and they’re successful, you can then use their stories to prospective students, right? And share their success. You have a space dedicated on your website talking about and spotlighting and showcasing those alumni and stories that you just mentioned. Talk about the importance of seeing these stories staying connected to your alumni so that they come back and, you know, everyone loves their alma mater, right? You know, you could also come back and if you can hire from the school that you graduated, how great does that feel? You know, that’s a win-win for everyone. So talk about that and the impact that it has on prospective students for your program.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
Sure. So if you google FAU alumni hospitality, they’ll pop up for you. My challenge is finding them and getting them to send me a little description of what they did in college and a photo. And then if we have a photo, I like to find them on LinkedIn or ways I can like every couple years and update their photo and update the jobs so they can tell like a, a story that the students in seats right now can resonate with. So I might have 20 or 30 on that site. I’ve probably had 10,000 graduates. So that’s the difficulty is in getting them back. And it’s funny that you say, you know, everybody loves their alma mater. I am not a UF fan anymore. UF was the end all be all for me. I was on orientation, I worked in admissions part-time, I was the student, rah rah, everything. They’ve morphed into something I wouldn’t wanna attend. Now as a student, I would wanna come to FAU and I enjoyed UCF, but I think FAU has something super special and different that I would’ve liked as a current day student in, in the way that we teach. We were way ahead of the curve and having excellence and rigor, but matched to your style, hybrid online, et cetera. There was a bad perception for many years that online was less rigorous, that it was low quality. We have a place here called the Center for Online and Continuing Education that trains all of the faculty and bar none. I am just as connected with my online MBA students as I am with my face-to-face just as warm and fuzzy with my online undergrads as I am with my face-to-face. It just takes a different way to communicate. That’s one of the good artifacts of covid is that we’re all more adept at dealing with virtual things without making them in inhumane. You know what I mean? Or whatever the term is. It’s just we’re better at it now.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
Well, it gives access and opportunities to people, you know, to attend FAU that maybe didn’t think about it before or other universities. So you’re right. And you see that in the success. I saw a post recently of FAU record breaking applications, enrollment for fall 2024 over 46,000 applications, which is the highest in university history. So again, you know, speaks directly to what you’re talking about today. You know, with so many students looking to attend the college, what advice would you have for those first time enrollees into the program?

Dr. Peter Ricci :
I would say another benefit that we have kind of morphed into creating here is we have the degree that will match what your goal is. So our more rigorous, arduous, time consuming degree is the Bachelor of Business Administration and the BBA. Then we have a Bachelor of Arts and general business, which is slightly more flexible. And then we have a Bachelor of general studies, which permits you to take classes at the junior senior level in quantity in your area of interest. So I have students who will come to me and say, I think I want to do communications intertwined with hospitality. So I’ll have them do a bachelor of general studies. They’ll do 15 hours in communications, 15 hours in hospitality. They’re much better prepared than any other degree would’ve got them. They just have to showcase that when they go out to the world for employers. So our variety is very good. You know, we are bucking the national trend. I have a wooden desk, so I’ll knock on wood, but we are suddenly the very popular place to come. And it’s not only in Florida. I teach the pre-business first year interest group students. And in my class of 25, there are always 8 to 12 that are from other countries, other states. And that was not the FAU that I grew up with. It’s the FAU of now. So when you come, if you come get engaged, get involved, it’s okay to be a fully online student, but set up one-on-one time with me. So I know where you work. I know how I can help you with our job list. I maintain a tremendous job email list. So most of our students find jobs within their first week of wanting to look but be engaged. Whether it’s student activities on campus. We’re popular because we are the second closest university in America to the beach. I don’t know if you knew that little fact.

Ryan Embree:
I knew you could see the ocean from the stadium. I do know that you have to go up high enough.

Dr. Peter Ricci :
We’re very close and outside of Pepperdine, that’s a blessing for us too because we have an amazing marine biology program. So there’s a multitude of reasons to study at FAU. One of the things that shocked me when I came here that I did not know is we’re one of the largest business schools in America. We have over 8,200 students in the college of business alone, which puts us in probably in the top 10 or 15. So we have the resources of this local community that has vibrant entrepreneurs and successful people in it. There are many articles that say Palm Beach is slowly becoming the wealth district of the South with a lot of companies opening second offices here from Manhattan. There’s just a lot going on here. And students feel that. They see that. You know, Ryan, to your point about flexibility and all, I have some bartenders that probably make two or three grand a week and if they wanna study online, so be it. And I don’t care if it takes ’em six years to graduate. I probably shouldn’t say that ’cause we prefer four year graduation rates. But why would I mess with your passion and what you love and your income and your happiness if you find that hospitality is your calling, just get your degree over time or do your certificate or whatever floats your boat. But we have the infrastructure in the university to tackle those varied desires. If you want to come here four years straight outta high school, live in the residence hall, you can do that too. And there’s plenty of stuff to do.

Ryan Embree:
Well, let’s flip the script because over a decade ago here I am about to go into the hospitality workforce out of UCF Rosen, fresh off of a recession around that time. Students here, they’re going into a workforce right now that is, frankly, it’s understaffed. We’re battling staffing shortages. We’ve talked to the AHLA on this podcast about how we can try to mitigate these trends and help our industry right now with staffing, you’re helping produce, you know, that workforce. What advice are you giving to that student that is about to walk across the auditorium and get their diploma and go into the workforce today?

Dr. Peter Ricci :
I’m on a panel this Thursday night for the South Florida Hospitality Human Resources Association, and they floated a statistic that I’m trying to verify. But it says there are more vacant positions right now across the globe in hospitality than there are workers. So it’s a bonanza if you’re a student, the wages are higher than they ever have been at the starting point, which is one of the positive outcomes of Covid. So no more, can you tell me that we don’t pay well, we pay well and we’ve always been an industry that once you move along the pathway to your liking a little bit, you can earn great salaries. I have several general managers slash chief operating officers within 10 miles of this campus who make over $500,000 a year. So are they toward the higher end of our scale? Yes. But that’s what we have in South Florida. So a lot of our students will fall in love with this community, see the opportunity, and then wanna stay in Miami Beach or want to go to the Keys or move to Jupiter. But in this region, but in general, there are more opportunities than ever before. Right before I joined your podcast, I was talking to the recruiter from a hotel collection and from airlines to the Brightline, high speed rail, to Amtrak, to Spirit Airlines. Everybody is looking for hires. So the opportunities are more than they have ever been. And I don’t expect this to change for the next three to seven years. It’s just the way the workforce is evolving and moving. What I will caution the students on is to find what they like and make sure they’re in the right culture. Because there are plenty of cultures out there that will match you and that will make you happy. If you want fully remote, find a company that prides fully remote. If you want hybrid, find the ones that has hybrid. Everybody’s doing something to attract, and you are more in the driver’s seat than when Ryan graduated at the end of a recession. So where you have a few choices. So, take that to your advantage. I mean, because it’s not gonna last forever. Every economy, every business model, every industry is cyclical and hospitality is no different. So this is the time for your ride.

Ryan Embree:
Do research too, right? Social media, what I tell actually hoteliers is, is one of the places that this younger workforce is gonna look at what a glimpse of a day in life might be is looking at reviews, right? Looking at guest feedback and saying, okay, am I gonna have people yelling at me all day with one star reviews? Or am I gonna have people praising me saying, this is an awesome environment, I had a great experience here. So reviews, social media, these are all places that, and this is speaking to the hoteliers as well. That is where students are looking. That’s where they do their research. We just put out a white paper on how social is the new search. People are looking for their information now using TikTok or Instagram and YouTube more than they are on search engines like Google. Make sure you’re insulated there as well and putting the best version of yourself out there because I think you’re right, Dr. Ricci. I mean it’s all about culture right now and finding fits and alignment there. So I wanna get your take on this because you’re an industry expert. Usually I say both sides of the front desk, but you’ve been on both sides of the front desk and the school desk as well. So as an industry expert, we’ve got a lot of these trends on the rise, I’m sure you’re teaching within your curriculum, sustainability within hospitality that is just booming right now. AI and technology, obviously that’s, that’s the hot trend. Guest personalization, experiential travel. How do you see the, the industry looking five years from now?

Dr. Peter Ricci :
It’s funny you bring those up. We update our certificate content every two years to be super relevant. And in the current run we have females in leadership, ai, sustainability, and the experience. I mean, it’s there. So, another, I guess not so shy plug for the program is we update the curriculum so frequently, many programs have stodgy curriculum committees and bureaucracies that they can’t do that. So we update immediately. So the next five years will focus on labor, focus on work life balance, or flexible work arrangements that’s not going away. Smart uses of ai, not just using artificial intelligence because it’s available and it’s there, but incorporating in ways that match what the guests want in your organization. And American Airlines guest is gonna be very different from a Choice Hotel’s guest who’s gonna be very different from a luxury resort in Macau. I mean, it’s just using the AI in the proper ways and also refining our talent acquisition methods and system to have a broader reach. We need people who are without GEDs, with GEDs, with high school degrees, with bachelor’s without bachelor’s. We need everybody. So if you have an innate desire to serve and you find that our industry matches your personality, then fall into the multiple ways of training and development that match you. So whether it’s American Hotel Lodging Education Institute, whether it’s National Restaurant Association, whether it’s Club managers Association, there’s training everywhere. So, you know, just fall in love first and then go with the training that matches and you’ll evolve. You know, like I was never into data analytics as much as I kind of am now to a little extent. I’ve always been an HR guy. So I really look at human resource trends and building cultures because rather than my owners slapping my wrist for spending too much, I would rather overspend on building a culture and make the owner wealthy. Because we have the kick ass service level. You know what I mean? Right. So I’d rather go that route than efficiencies and cost cutting. But I do need the AI and the algorithms and everything to monitor my cost successfully and to stay within parameters. So, you know, technology is the next five years, it’s the next 500 years. Um, using it correctly is where I find some recent graduates and students having a hard time. They have a difficult time telling the story from the data. So it’s analyzing the data very, very well. Granular, the best way possible, but then telling the story and what does it mean for me to change on that side of the desk or change on this side of the desk. That’s where you have to do it. You know, and I learned, like you said, I’m on both sides of the desk here. Um, I learned from the students, what do they need? What do they want from the faculty on the other side? What’s fair rigor? What should we be teaching? What is the best tool to use to teach quantitative analysis? Is it Power bi, is it Tableau? Is it Excel? Is it all of ’em? You know, so those discussions are never ending, always evolving. And they should be because our industry’s always evolving.

Ryan Embree:
Well, you’re absolutely right. And just like you’re talking to the next generation of hoteliers, you’re also talking to the next generation of travelers, right? So it’s like, how are they doing research for their own trips? What are they looking at? What do they wanna do? Is it solo travel? Right? Experiential travel. How are they documenting their travel? You know, Instagram, social media is a big part of that. But it’s funny, you talk about the talent acquisition. I think you’re absolutely right. The way we get outta the staffing shortages, you know, to share stories, one success stories, but also open the lens a little bit wider. We have another series on this podcast called Hospitality Trailblazers. You’d be surprised how many of these CEOs, COOs of successful hotel management companies come from the front line. So my joke is always you want to talk to the next great CEO of a hotel management company. Go talk to your bellman right now. Maybe in 20 years they might be there. But I think you’re absolutely right. Dr. Ricci, it was absolute pleasure speaking with you today and talking about FAU Hospitality Tourism Program. Very educational. So thank you for taking the time with me on the Suite Spot. Thank you all for listening to the Suite Spot, we’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.