Course list

Running a successful hotel today is a highly collaborative process involving many roles.

This course is structured around the four key stages in the guest experience -- pre-arrival, arrival, occupancy, and departure -- and will explain hotel operations, the systems that hotels rely on, and the managers and staff who run them. During the guests' experience, managers and staff will learn how to engage with guests to win and maintain their loyalty.

Professor Reneta McCarthy brings first-hand knowledge of hotel operations to this course, providing insights and guidelines that will give participants a good understanding of the inner workings of today's hotels.

In this course you will define and differentiate between leadership and management, develop a strategy for overcoming new leadership challenges, and evaluate motivational techniques and determine when to use them. You will also identify the skills needed to develop relationships crucial to your career development as a leader, based on the research and expertise of Professor Kate Walsh, Ph.D. of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration.

Using tools provided in this course, you will explore what motivates others, assess leadership styles, and examine communication with your leadership team. With the completion of an action plan at the end of the course, you will be ready to apply what you learn to your own organization.

In this course, you will create a strategy to turn a work group into a high-functioning team by evaluating challenges and applying techniques to generate positive team outcomes. Based on the research and expertise of Professor Kate Walsh, PhD, of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, you will learn how to enable a team to take ownership of its own success and shift leadership roles as the team assumes greater responsibility. 

Using tools provided in this course, you will explore best practices in leading teams, assess case studies, and examine functional conflict. With the completion of an action plan at the end of the course, you will be ready to apply what you learn to your own organization.

Every property's finance function keeps detailed records of the daily transactions involved in the running the organization. Periodically, they create reports that allow management, stakeholders and regulating authorities to have insight into the financial health of the organization. As a manager, you need to understand both the metrics that are reported in income statement, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, and how they relate to each other. You also need to understand how comparing numbers across your company, the industry, and from year to year, can help you assess the overall financial performance of the firm.

The in-depth review of sample case studies in this course will provide you with the tools you need to examine your own property's reports. As you make budgeting and investment decisions, your knowledge of how vital financial markers indicate relative health in the organization will help drive initiatives to meet your company's financial goals.

A company's financial performance, and its ability to grow and thrive over time, can be assessed through ratio analysis, the basic evaluation tool for asset management, solvency and profitability. Whether you are managing the financial performance of a department, unit, or the organization as a whole, working with these ratios can help identify opportunities and allow you to make adjustments to improve performance.

As you become familiar with asset management ratios such as days sales outstanding and days to turnover, you will be able to apply these techniques in comparing your company's performance against others in the industry and against its own financial history. The ratio analysis tools you learn will help your organization to design and implement initiatives for increased productivity and profitability.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Understanding Financial Statements

Services marketing is often viewed in terms of outcomes, but services marketing is also an ongoing analytic process. In this course, you will learn how to properly analyze frameworks, tools, channels, data sets, customer behavioral data, decision-making factors, and strategies that support broader marketing decisions.

Authored by Robert Kwortnik from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, this course will teach you how to review the way marketing works in your organization and how to create and apply a services marketing process.

To make services marketing work, you need to have a clear picture of the business environment and understand how your target customers behave. Knowing your market and assessing consumer demand can help inform and guide your marketing strategies. In this course, you will explore the role that micro and macro forces  play when conducting a situation analysis. You'll also take a deep dive into what drives consumer behavior.

Revenue management is key to any business that has relatively fixed capacity, perishable inventory, and time-variable demand. This course introduces you to the basics of revenue management in the hotel industry: how to apply pricing and length-of-stay tools and how to measure your revenue management performance. It is designed to inspire you to shift your thinking about revenue management from a focus on occupancy and average room rate to a focus on revenue per available room (RevPAR).

This course teaches you how to accurately forecast guest arrivals at your hotel, examine pricing models in accordance with revenue management principles, and to manage overbooking. All of the techniques and practices discussed in this course are applicable to a variety of service management roles.

By completing this course you will have compiled detailed notes and recommendations for implementing revenue management at the organization where you work.

 

Successful revenue management strategies hinge on the ability to forecast demand and to control room availability and length of stay. This course explores the role of the forecast in a revenue management strategy and the positive impact that forecasting can also have on staff scheduling and purchasing.

Authored by Professor Sheryl E. Kimes from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, during this course you'll get a step-by-step approach to creating an accurate forecast as you learn how to build booking curves, account for "pick-up", segment demand by market, group, and channel, and calculate error and account for its impact.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Hotel Revenue Management

Successful marketing and revenue generation in hospitality requires the management of an array of new media including, social, mobile, and search. While these new media enable marketers to reach customers in ways that were previously not possible, successful use must be anchored by core marketing and demand management principles. This course provides you with a grounding in brand management and focuses on the importance of identifying and establishing your "brand promise": the experience your guests take away from engaging with your brand as the basis of new media management.

You'll experience the challenges involved in maintaining your brand's promise across a growing array of new media channels. You'll be exposed to sound marketing concepts, advice from industry experts, and actual experience with new media in exercises and simulations. You'll then take what you have learned and apply it to your existing marketing efforts based on industry best practices and time-tested frameworks for profitable marketing.

You'll learn directly from some of the heaviest hitters in new media for hospitality - CEOs, search, social and mobile media consultants, property-level managers, and more through interactive projects and compelling video exercises. See first-hand how the successful implementation of new media can help you deliver on your firm's "brand promise", enabling you to deal with market uncertainties and guide your organization toward sustained profitability.

Amid the swirl of activity in food and beverage service, financial management is a function that loses priority sometimes, despite its crucial function.

Understanding and managing your food and beverage operation's income statement (profit and loss statement) can lead to better decision making and can position you to succeed. Learn how to get a hold on your organization's finances and make informed decisions based on profit and performance.

Loyal repeat customers are key to the success of any food and beverage operation. They represent recurring revenue and are a great source for feedback and gauging customer sentiment. They can also be your greatest evangelists, recommending you to friends and colleagues, even giving favorable online reviews.

Through careful design, meticulous attention to service processes, and a way to gauge customer sentiment, you can play to your team's strengths and identify opportunities for improving the guest experience to grow your business.

Owning or managing a restaurant is a challenging prospect in today's competitive food service environment. To increase your chances of success, you need a proven system of data-driven tools focused on profits, not just costs.

In this course Professor Kimes will guide you through the restaurant revenue management process, providing real-world examples, strategies, and techniques that will help you apply these tools to your own restaurant. You will explore the key inputs of space, time, and price to determine how you make appropriate trade-offs to maximize restaurant revenue. Using spreadsheet tools, you will calculate critical metrics and establish baseline performance levels. Based on these levels, you will identify the most significant challenges and determine which strategies will be most effective in overcoming these issues and optimizing your restaurant's revenue and overall performance.

When your restaurant is busy, every minute can count towards increasing your revenue. Professor Kimes explores how reducing meal duration, even by a single minute, can increase revenue potential. You need to consider the style of your restaurant and your customers when thinking about what an appropriate meal duration is. Then you can analyze the six stages of meal duration to determine where you can reduce time while maintaining a pleasant dining experience for your customers.

Additionally, the way you manage reservations is crucial, especially during busy periods. There are several things you need to decide when it comes to how you are going to take reservations in your restaurant. You will examine the different approaches to taking and managing reservations, whether by phone, online, or mobile. You can use a dedicated website for the restaurant, a third party website, or a third party app.

Professor Kimes will give you practical strategies to determine how you can improve your meal duration and your reservation systems, which are critically important to increasing revenue when your restaurant is at capacity.

Symposium sessions feature three days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today’s most pressing topics. The Leadership Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

Join us for the next Symposium in which we’ll discuss the ways that leaders across industries have continued engaging their teams over the past two years while pivoting in strategic ways. You will support your coursework by applying your knowledge and experiences to relevant topics for leaders. Throughout this Symposium, you will examine different areas of leadership, including innovation, strategy, and engagement. By participating in relevant and engaging discussions, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections with your fellow participants from various industries.

Upcoming Symposium: February 11, 12 and 13, 2025 from 11am – 1pm ET

  • Tuesday, February 11, 2025 11am – 1pm ET
  • Wednesday, February 12, 2025 11am – 1pm ET
  • Thursday, February 13, 2025 11am – 1pm ET

          All sessions are held on Zoom.

          Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.

          Symposium sessions feature two days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today’s most pressing topics. The Hospitality Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

          Join us for the next Symposium, in which we’ll discuss how both day-to-day operations and strategic goal setting in the hospitality sector have rapidly evolved over the past two years, opening up new space for real-time conversations about the future of the industry. You will support your coursework by applying your knowledge and experiences to various areas of the industry, examining the innovations and accommodations you have all had to make throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and strategizing on future directions. By participating in relevant and engaging discussions, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections with your fellow participants from across the industry.

          Upcoming Symposium: December 3 and 4, 2024

          • Tuesday, December 3, 2024 11:00AM ET – 1:00PM ET
            • Building Employee Capabilities
          • Wednesday, December 4, 2024 5:00PM ET – 7:00PM ET
            • From Good to Great: Elevating Customer Service

          All sessions are held on Zoom.

          Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.

          Symposium sessions feature two days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today’s most pressing topics. The Marketing Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

          Join us for the next Symposium, in which we’ll share experiences from across the industry, inspiring real-time conversations about best practices, innovation, and the future of marketing work. You will support your coursework by applying your knowledge and experiences to some of the most pressing topics and trends in the marketing field. By participating in relevant and engaging discussions, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections with your fellow participants from across the industry.

          Upcoming Symposium: March 11th – 12th, 2025: 

          • Tuesday, March 11, 2025 11AM – 1PM ET
          • Wednesday, March 12, 2025 11AM – 1PM ET

          All sessions are held on Zoom.

          Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.

          Hospitality marketing is fast shifting from traditional media to digital forms (e.g., social media, video, website and search, plus mobile applications). New-media technologies have changed the ways consumers experience and value a product or service. So how can you draw on these technologies to enhance your operations and provide distinct customer value? And how can you be sure your efforts in new media are producing tangible returns?

          In this course, you'll examine innovations and trends in new media, and ways to leverage them to your brand's advantage. You will consider how new media can improve your marketing efforts by managing customer expectations and enhancing the consumer experience, and you'll discuss how to measure the success of those efforts. You'll also determine what organizational considerations will allow you to better leverage the evolving impact of new media and plan the future structure and role of your organization in this important area.

          Explore this content through a mix of input from hospitality industry experts, hands-on practical activities, and the presentation of sound principles by Cornell faculty. Experience the content through the use of a fictional hotel case study with valuable feedback provided by your online instructor and peers.

          You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

          • Marketing the Hospitality Brand Through Digital Media

          A smart pricing strategy is the best way to increase revenue. This course teaches you how to set prices, develop rate fences (differentiate prices by customer type), and use multiple distribution channels to manage price more effectively.

          You'll also learn about the impact of variable pricing and discounting on revenue management in the context of price elasticity, optimal price mix, perceived fairness, and congruence with positioning and sales strategies.

          Discover the ins and outs of channel management, an essential tool for controlling differentiated pricing, maintaining rate fences, and increasing revenue. Explore various approaches to managing distribution channels including direct sales, agencies, the Internet, and opaque pricing channels. Sheryl E. Kimes, professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, will provide you with the knowledge you need to help run a successful organization.

          You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

          • Introduction to Hotel Revenue Management
          • Forecasting and Availability Controls in Hotel Revenue Management

          Businesses that accept reservations must cope with the problem of no-shows: customers who make a reservation but fail to honor it. Hotels can protect themselves against revenue loss from no-shows by overbooking. This course teaches you how to strategically overbook and how to evaluate groups in order to determine which rates to charge.

          You will examine the components of a successful overbooking strategy: no-show forecasting, no-show rates, arrival uncertainty, pricing policies, and cancellation forecasts. You will consider the risks of overbooking and review strategies to minimize costs and mitigate customer impact.

          This course, authored by Cornell University Professor Sheryl E. Kimes, will help you create a group forecast and explore yieldable and non-yieldable business and incremental group costs and revenue opportunities. Finally, you will employ models to calculate displacement costs and contribution margins to determine which customer groups will return the most profit.

          You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

          • Introduction to Hotel Revenue Management
          • Forecasting and Availability Controls in Hotel Revenue Management
          • Pricing Strategy and Distribution Channels in Hotel Revenue Management

          Any business that has relatively fixed capacity, perishable inventory, and time-variable demand can increase revenue using revenue management—not just hotels. This course, authored by Cornell University's Professor Sheryl E. Kimes, reviews the basics of revenue management and outlines the application of revenue management principles to other businesses, both inside the hotel and beyond, such as spas, restaurants, and golf courses.

          Through your work on the course project, you will reinforce what you have learned about the refinement and extension of revenue management practices and will develop notes and recommendations for implementing and extending revenue management at the organization where you work.

          You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

          • Introduction to Hotel Revenue Management
          • Forecasting and Availability Controls in Hotel Revenue Management
          • Pricing Strategy and Distribution Channels in Hotel Revenue Management
          • Overbooking Practices in Hotel Revenue Management

          Your services marketing efforts depend on information. Without relevant and accurate information, every decision you make will suffer from bad input. 

          A well-run marketing information system captures, organizes, analyzes, and interprets data from a wide variety of sources to create a robust portrait of the ideal customers and their specific wants or needs. With the ideal buyer in mind, you can better target them with high-impact messaging that communicates a compelling brand promise and a clear reason to buy. 

          In this course, you will learn when to use internal or external market data and when to conduct your own primary research. You'll also discover how segmentation, targeting, and positioning (the STP process) translates your analysis and research findings into a positioning strategy that appeals to the right target market at the right time and at the right price. 

          You have marketing goals and you're feeling ready to execute. Maybe you want to increase market share, retain more customers or generally broaden consumer awareness. 

          But how do you turn your goals into action? And how will you measure success? In this course, you will explore how to turn marketing goals into action by developing a marketing strategy and creating an enduring brand promise.

          You want your marketing efforts to generate demand. While increased demand naturally drives business and success, it does come with specific sets of challenges. 

          Mitigating these challenges requires a keen understanding of demand management. In essence, demand management requires us to ask “How should we set our prices?” “How will we guarantee that our distribution partners ensure timely delivery?”

          In this course, you'll answer those questions and explore how pricing and distribution strategies can directly affect demand for your service.

          It's hard to overstate: A marketing strategy lives or dies in communication with the customer. And there's a methodology to it—it is the culmination of all of the marketing research and analysis you've done. 

          What you say, how you say it, how often you say it, the media channels you use to distribute your message, how you respond to complaints—all of this affects customers' experiences with your brand. 

          In this course, you'll take a deep dive into integrated marketing communications, or IMC. You'll explore a process-based approach to designing creative communications using a variety of methods and media. Finally, you'll examine ways to assess the performance of an IMC campaign.

          Your menu does much more than inform guests about what you offer. It helps to create and communicate your food and beverage operation's identity, and influences your guests' choices.

          This course will enable you to evaluate menus and identify changes that will optimize the value and profitability of your food and beverage operation.

          Your operation's brand is like a contract with the customer, and the expectation is that value will be delivered in relative accordance with price and quality of service. But keeping food costs down is no easy task. In fact, it's one of the most detail-oriented, scientific processes that go into running a restaurant and there are many challenges with keeping food costs controlled.

          In this course, you'll learn to optimize your operation's profits by effectively managing your selection, procurement, receiving, storage, and inventory management processes.

          When your restaurant is busy, you might think that you can't possibly generate any additional revenue. However, in this course Professor Sheryl Kimes will provide you will a set of tools you can use to optimize your table mix so it better reflects the mix of parties you have coming in through the door. You will also learn how to select and place tables, assign guests to tables, and set the ambiance of your restaurant to grow your revenue. Finally, you will devise pricing strategies that are most effective when your restaurant is busy.

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