Stephani Robson, senior lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, worked for several years in restaurants and retail food operations in her native Canada before deciding to pursue a college degree in the field. She graduated from the School of Hotel Administration in 1988, and began her career as a food-service designer with Cini-Little International and subsequently with Marrack Watts in Toronto, Ontario. As a professional food-service designer, she has designed kitchen facilities for hotels, restaurants, airports, hospitals, universities, and catering halls. She joined the school’s faculty in 1993, earned a Master of Science in human-environment relations in 1999, and in 2010 completed her PhD at Cornell with a focus on consumer behavior in restaurants. Her academic interests center on how the design of environments affect consumer intentions, satisfaction, and behavior. She is a specialist in the psychology of restaurants and has presented and published her research in a wide range of industry and academic forums around the world.
Initial Hotel Planning DecisionsCornell Course
Course Overview
An important aspect of hotel design is the early planning decisions that owners, developers, and designers must make. These include addressing the needs and opportunities of the target market prior to the detailed design of specific parts of a hotel.
This course will prepare participants to contribute effectively to initial decisions relating to full-service hotel planning, helping to ensure that later design decisions will take into account the target customer, the lodging product to be provided, and the associated allocation of space.
Professor Stephani Robson, an expert in hotel planning and design, brings this phase of hotel planning to life with a wealth of content backed by activities designed to help you apply these concepts in practical ways.
The following course is required to be completed before taking this course:
- Foundations of Hotel Planning
Key Course Takeaways
- Identify the early decisions that need to be made before planning specific parts of the hotel
- Determine the needs and opportunities of a specific hotel environment and identify the hotel functions required to support the target market
- Assess the proportions of space dedicated to major parts of a hotel and analyze the relationships between various functional areas
- Apply planning and efficiency metrics that will help to ensure the success of a project
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
Course Author
Who Should Enroll
- Architects
- Interior designers
- Hotel consultants
- Architecture students
- Owners, developers, and construction managers
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