The experience of creating a teaching hotel: a case study of hotel icon in Hong Kong

Hotel ICON, The Hong Kong Polytechnic university's multi-million dollar teaching hotel is scheduled for completion and opening in April 2011. The hotel is primarily built to serve the university's School of Hotel and Tourism, supporting the education of its 2,100 students in hospitality management and research work of its 60 faculty members. The experience of creating such a teaching hotel would be useful to institutions which are considering the idea of developing hotel facilities to support teaching and learning of hospitality management in higher education. This case study documents the university's considerations and its major decisions in the teaching hotel project, covering the hotel's ownership and management issues, how it balances the teaching hotel's educational and commercial needs, how the industry and the community at large react to such a teaching hotel, and how the university accomplishes its educational mission with the hotel.