Students Get a Taste of Shows

Students enrolled in the University of Nevada Las Vegas' hotel administration program may know in theory how to set up an event registration system or sell conference sponsorships. But now some of them will have an opportunity to apply those classroom lessons to the real world.

The inaugural Las Vegas Intl. Hospitality and Convention Summit, scheduled June 6-8 in UNLV's Stan Fulton Building, will not only provide educators a forum to present papers and soak up the latest on cutting-edge issues, but give two dozen students a taste of the workaday world.

The students will do everything from set up audiovisual and communications equipment and sell sponsorships to make over rooms and organize registration systems. "We're not trying to tell people what to do every step of the way. We'll give them a goal and they'll have to do whatever it takes to get to that goal, just like when you get a real job," said graduate student Kyung Ahn, who will manage the students.

The June conference is an outgrowth of the Convention/Expo Summit, an 11-year-old rotating event that has been held in a variety of locales, including Las Vegas and Hong Kong. Organizer Patti Shock, chair of UNLV's tourism and convention administration department, said she hopes that expanding the summit to include educators from throughout the hospitality industry – not just conventions – will enable her to double attendance to 200.

Shock said 43 papers have been submitted for peer review. The academic papers cover many of the same issues of current concern in the tradeshow industry: attrition, site selection and convention and visitors bureau ethics. "We teach the students about the same things that are in the headlines," she said.

This year also marks the first that a small tradeshow component is being added. Among the 16 expected tabletop exhibitors are several textbook publishers, the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority. IAEM President Steven Hacker will speak on the importance of teaching exhibition management. A number of other industry representatives are scheduled to present, including David Kushner, executive director of the Professional Convention Management Assn., and Juli Jones, the Convention Industry Council's APEX project director.

The summit is being endorsed by the CIC, and Meeting Professionals Intl. is a major sponsor. Besides a golf outing, the event will offer tours of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, the Sands Expo & Convention Center and the Bellagio and Venetian hotels. Among the hands-on workshops is a demonstration of the Expocad showfloor-layout program.

Shock said students will design the exhibitor prospectus. They'll also be on hand at a student help desk to assist attendees with transportation and restaurant or show reservations. One student with a Web design background will help with the HTML e-mails to be sent to potential attendees and sponsors.

"This is exciting," said Ahn. "This is not a fake hotel or a fake restaurant to design. This is a real convention."

There's no shortage of student interest. Participating in the summit will fulfill the requirements of a "capstone" class, said Ahn, who solicited resumes from prospective participants. "Some classes involve a lot of writing. People think this is going to be less work," he said.

UNLV's convention management classes are offered under the auspices of the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration. Students working toward hotel administration degrees can pursue concentrations in individual subject areas, including convention management. Due to the program's professional nature, students must complete an internship and 1,000 hours of work experience to graduate.

Many of the students helping with the summit currently work in the hospitality field, said Ahn, former convention services supervisor for New York New York. Ahn said the students will be meeting every other week to iron out their roles. He added that he will also be producing a planning document that can be used to guide future classes through the summit-organizing process.

Ahn entered the business in 1996, after earning an industrial engineering degree from University of Southern California and discovering he wasn't cut out for a desk job. He'd enjoyed working as a bartender while in school, so decided to enroll in UNLV's hotel management program. Ahn said that after he completes a dual master's degree in hotel administration and business administration he'd like to work at a boutique hotel.