Intercultural Insights for the Hotel Industry – A Student Project by Hospitality Booster and EHL
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Intercultural Insights for the Hotel Industry – A Student Project by Hospitality Booster and EHL

As part of the Hospitality Booster by HotellerieSuisse, we launched an exciting collaboration with the École hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL). Six talented students carried out a Student Business Project (SBP), focusing on countries that are becoming increasingly important tourism markets for Switzerland – including Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the USA, Mexico, Muslim heritage regions, and Anglo-European countries.

The objective: to provide Swiss hospitality businesses with practical tools to better understand the expectations and preferences of these growing guest segments – and to help teams engage with them in a more culturally sensitive way.

The result is a series of seven compact yet content-rich Guest Insights Brochures that address the following key questions:

  • What cultural norms shape travel expectations?

  • What dining habits and daily rhythms should be taken into account?

  • How do communication and service preferences differ?

  • What are the practical implications for day-to-day hotel operations?

👉 All brochures are available for download here:

Japan | USA | Brazil | Mexico | South Korea | Muslim Heritage Markets | Anglo-European

Note: All brochures are currently available in English only.

They were developed entirely by the student team, with academic supervision and professional input from HotellerieSuisse.

These brochures offer hands-on, practical insights for front office, F&B, and hotel management teams – making them ideal for internal staff training or as a source of inspiration for delivering more culturally aware guest experiences.

Additional brochures on guest expectations from India, China, Russia, the Gulf States and the Jewish community are available here.

We thank the EHL team for their outstanding collaboration and look forward to seeing this project help the Swiss hospitality industry grow even more interculturally competent.

Disclaimer: This blog post (and even the header image, if you’re wondering) was crafted with a little help from Generative AI – because even cultural intelligence deserves digital support.