Message from CEO (SSTH)

Nepal and Switzerland are both beautiful small countries and both host a multicultural society. In my opinion, being small allows special attention to be paid to the individual. This empathy is the core of cross-cultural competence, the key competence in the 21st century – certainly globally, but especially in the hospitality industry.

What is of value to Nepal and to Switzerland is also true for GATE and SSTH. The global hospitality industry is huge and opportunities seem endless, students (and travelers) are often unable to cope with this that is why it is crucial to create an environment where students are enabled to take long term decisions for their life. GATE and SSTH are both small enough to care and big enough to lead.

Each one of us is born an individual, unique of its kind. Driven by competition and economies of scale our society has sometimes chosen to standardize; we find restaurant chains, clothes stores and coffee shops around the world that seem to be alike, as if they would follow a common identity. The processes and the communication behavior of companies follow checklists, products are labeled, but while everything may be better, brighter and more varied, it is actually increasingly the same. Often today’s companies and individuals continually compare themselves; the effect is that they become adjusted, but adjustment is just another word for exchangeability!

It is the cultural difference that inspires us on our journeys, the vibrating hustle and bustle of an Arab bazaar, the hot and humid air saturated with the smell of Asian food, the sound of silence and the clear starry sky of the desert, or the special crunching of snow under foot on a cold winter’s day: these treasures are unique!

Neither SSTH, nor GATE or you as an individual shall ever abandon yourself to an adjustment process, just by imitating someone else will never get you to the top - merely to the middle. I’d like to encourage you to search for your special talents and gifts by bringing your talents into work and into society, to become valuable, inspirational and incomparable.

By using the words of Paolo Coelho, “Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.”

Best wishes for your journey!

Dr. Ursula Gehbauer Tichler
CEO, Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality
Passugg, Switzerland