UNOH Students Compete in Hotel ROI Competition

Posted on Tuesday, March 03, 2020

UNOH Students Lanie McCartney, Meredith Spolyar, and Tamara Knight

UNOH Travel and Hotel Management students competed recently in the “Battle of the Universities” at the Chicago HOTEL ROI conference. The object of the completion was to come up with a new Hotel Concept and present to the panel of judges that were made up of industry executives, developers, and owners attending the conference. 

The team representing UNOH was Meredith Spolyar, second year student from Quincy, Michigan, as well as first year students Tamara Knight from Navarre, Ohio and Lanie McCartney from North Baltimore, Ohio. UNOH battled against three other universities: Florida International University-Miami, Lakeland University-Plymouth Wisconsin and University of Texas-Rio Grande.

The three UNOH students came up with the Antiquity Inn, a hotel concept that took the history of the hotel’s location and made it the overall theme of the property. They showed off an example of this property as if it were located in Lima, Ohio.

They had the opportunity to make a 10-minute presentation to the judges to explain their concept. Four minutes of the presentation had to be a video presentation. Lanie McCartney said, “It was a cool experience talking in front of hotel developers and owners. The feedback from the judges was informative for my future career.” She admits when asked about the judge’s questions “They were hard, but very useful information was learned to consider when developing a hotel.”

Meredith Spolyar had a positive observation about the impact on her own development as a student stating,  “It was an enjoyable experience. It got me out of my comfort zone to practice public speaking. Overall, interacting with multiple businessmen and other students while presenting was a good way to practice a weakness of mine.”

Tamara Knight said about her experience, “I was glad I participated because of the opportunity to connect to with industry owners and developers to build my industry network”.  In fact, an Ohio Hotel developer approached them after their presentation and said he liked their presentation and would investigate the location they presented as well as invited the students to submit their resumes to his company following graduation!

In January, the students were featured in Hotel Management, an industry e-publication that is distributed worldwide.

For more information about the Travel and Hotel Management program, visit https://www.unoh.edu/academics/college-of-occupational-professions/travel-hospitality.html

Category: Business, Health, and Occupational Professions

Keywords: Travel and Hotel Management