THEM Student Experiences

Brianna Blassneck Offering Students Hands-on Learning Opportunities

For HFT4517 – Convention Sales and Services, the students complete two mock site visits at event venues. For the residential students we have a lot of local support with suppliers. The UFO students are given agency to choose their venues.

This class is chiefly concerned about events from a venue perspective, so these assignments allow the students to witness a sales pitch in action and analyze the various characteristics of the property. Since they are touring the venue from the client’s perspective, it is a nice role-reversal to critically analyze this interaction between vendor and client.

The students can compare what they’ve learned and what they’ve witnessed first-hand and assess whether this is an appropriate venue for their event. As an added bonus, they make more connections within the industry!

What Our Students Say

• “I believe that the site visits will be one of the most important things I learned from the course. Getting comfortable asking questions, communicating and networking is important…relationships are important everywhere.”
• “The discussions we had about meeting with hotels to set up conferences as well as the site visits really helped. Being able to interact with someone currently in the industry was beneficial.”
• “I especially enjoyed the site visits as that gave real world experience.”
• “The assignments in the class were very intentional and left me feeling more prepared for my future in the industry after college.”
• “I have loved touring hotels and facilities to make events happen.”
• “I learned hands-on with professionals already in the industry.”