MD Interview: Ron Hilvert

Ron Hilvert first arrived in the UAE in 1978, and has witnessed many changes.

After 18 years of working with the Jumeirah Group and The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management (EAHM), its founding managing director Ron Hilvert will be bidding adieu to the UAE on January 2, 2016.

It is a bittersweet ending for Hilvert, who leaves just as EAHM is ready to celebrate its 15th anniversary of operations.

The inimitable Hilvert first arrived in the UAE in 1978 to open Dubai International (now Le Méridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre) as director of manpower development. Later on in his career, he was involved in the UAE again with the opening of the Hyatt Regency in Deira, as worldwide vice president of Hyatt Hotels. He then returned to Dubai two months before the opening of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in 1997 — the year when Chicago Beach Hotel was lost to the annals of time. When he joined Jumeirah, he was principally involved in recruiting the first 5,000 employees as a human resources consultant. Six months later, he joined the company as corporate director of human resources.

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The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management was born from a conversation Hilvert had with Jumeirah president and CEO Gerald Lawless in 1999. They discussed the potential of the UAE launching a college specialising in hospitality and tourism, because, according to the owning company there was a feeling that these would be one of the future critical industries for the country.

Hilvert then set about writing a concept paper — and didn’t hear anything for several months. And then one day, Lawless told Hilvert the project was confirmed. “I became the managing director of this college before we even had a stone in the ground here,” he says.

Things started moving quickly for the fledgling team. Ready to operate by mid-2001, the Academy accepted its first undergraduate student in September 2001. At the time, only about 25% of colleges were accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education, so one of the major decisions was whether to become federally accredited, or join the hordes of colleges in Knowledge Village which were satellite campuses of international schools.

Hilvert reveals to Hotelier: “The recommendation I made was that if we don’t do it ourselves, we cannot ever get our own reputation. We will always be thought of as some branch campus of an international university. We made what was a very courageous decision to go our own way — which has proven to be a good decision.”

However, that did not mean there would be no collaboration. Another recommendation by Hilvert was to work with one of the world’s top hospitality schools. The team spoke to the names everyone would expect, and then started working with Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, which, Lausanne alumni Hilvert says is arguably the most famous hotel school in the world along with Cornell in the US. The relationship is purely an academic association.

He says: “We are not what Lausanne calls a certified school. Lausanne is a good advisor to us, they conduct an academic review every couple of years. They have no direct authority over us. The relationship has been excellent, and what Lausanne has done has given us a quality message.

“When you talk to prospective students and parents and industry and say that you’re the only hotel school in the world that has that tagline ‘in academic association’, then they know that quality is here. That also was a good decision.”

Once the classes began, EAHM faced a fairly unique situation with 15 students and 13 faculty members. “I don’t think any college has experienced this, and that ratio is unheard of! But what is interesting is that we’re still in touch with those 15 students. They have excellent positions all over the world. One is a vice president of a major hotel company, one is working for Ernst & Young in US, and another is a hotel manager in Indonesia. This exemplifies the culture that we have here,” says Hilvert, with a touch of nostalgia.