Last spring break, a group of School of Hospitality students visited the Westin Times Square with Union Square Hospitality Group. Photo courtesy of School of Hospitality Administration

School of Hospitality Administration

SHA Students Will Learn about Hospitality in New York, Paris, and Panama This Week

The school is subsidizing the cost of the trips, which will include visiting luxury hotels, vineyards, and boutiques

While some students head home for spring break and others swap the Boston chill for a tropical destination, Tristan Huynh will be spending his time a little differently. 

Huynh (SHA’25), a grad student studying hospitality management, is traveling to Panama through the School of Hospitality Administration’s Spring Break Experiences program. SHA offers three different trips: to Paris, New York, and Panama, partnering with hotel and tourism groups to give students a look behind the scenes at the industry they’re planning to go into. Students will meet with bigwigs and SHA alums working in the hospitality industry, have networking opportunities, and sightsee.

“When I first heard about [the trips] last year, I was like, wow, I’ve never heard about any school at BU that has anything like this,” Huynh says. “You only pay a small fee in exchange for such a great experience.” 

SHA helps with the cost of the trips. Students pay for their travel arrangements, but only $500 for the rest of the trip, which includes their lodging, some meals, and all the excursions. If that $500 is a barrier, they can apply for scholarships to make the trip possible. 

“What’s so great about our school is it opened doors to these opportunities,” says program organizer Mara Littman (SHA’20), SHA’s director of corporate and public relations. “It has said, ‘We built it and you can come, we will make it possible.’ [The school] heavily subsidizes it.”

This is SHA’s third year running the trips and the experience has been popular among students. “They talk about it all year,” Littman says, and not only do students enjoy it on a personal level, but they get tangible lessons from the trips that they can talk about in an interview or professional setting. “I truly believe it’s very important to further educational experience in our school,” she says. 

While part of the trips is examining how the hospitality industry functions in each location, a more important aspect is giving students the opportunity to get to know a new culture. SHA Dean Arun Upneja says the trips are designed to go beyond the “Top 10 list” of tourist must-dos in each location and that it is vital that students come away with an understanding of the culture, local economy, and how real people live.

“To us it is so much better if [students] have a deeper appreciation of other people so that they can be more effective in their jobs, as employees, as managers, and as people taking care of people who are coming to them,” Upneja says. 

Kyle McMullin (SHA’24, Questrom’24) experienced that deeper cultural connection when he attended the Panama trip last year during spring break. One of his clearest memories is learning about “the Panama hat”—the woven straw hat typically worn in the country. McMullin found out that the hat’s folds express different things, like flirting (he calls it a “secret language”). 

“It just shows that you care, that you’re trying, [and] when you go to new places that it’s not going to be the same [as] where you’re from,” McMullin says. You learn to “admire that, and try without trying too hard.”

No matter the destination, students encounter many experiences. Those traveling to Panama hear from executives from the Selina Hotel Group, an up-and-coming hotel chain, and they’ll see the Panama Canal. They’re encouraged to go on hikes and trips to local villages and explore the communities. 

Students going to New York visit Union Square Hospitality Group’s headquarters and attend a performance of Moulin Rouge: The Musical. They also take a walking tour of Harlem and explore its history and art, then eat lunch at Red Rooster Harlem and learn about its celebrity chef, Marcus Samuelsson. 

If they’re jetting to Paris, they tour various luxury hotels and visit La Galerie Dior, an exhibition outlining the work of Christian Dior. They also take an arts and architectural tour of the first Parisian department store, Le Bon Marché, sited in a 19th-century art-deco building. 

Huynh is looking forward to spending time in Panama, a place he probably wouldn’t otherwise visit, and bonding more with SHA classmates. While SHA is a “tight-knit” community, he says, he’s looking forward to connecting more with the people he sees in the building and learning from the faculty and staff accompanying students on the trips. 

“It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the professors and staff outside of school, so you can learn more about life,” he says. “I’m most excited to get to connect with people and make memories, and obviously learn more about the city.”