Faculty, students, alumni and business leaders attended business panels, ate Hotelie-made meals and drinks and toured Ithaca with Hotelie-designed itineraries during the 101st Annual Hotel Ezra Cornell, a three-day student-hosted business conference for leaders in the hospitality industry which concluded on Saturday.
HEC first started as a “hotel-for-a-day” event at Risley Residence College, and it has expanded over the years. The event now functions as a major hospitality conference.
The decades-long tradition and connection to Hotelie culture baked into HEC played a large part in Kai Edwards ’29 decision to join the organization, Edwards said.
“A lot of our guests are people who contributed to their own HEC before," Edwards said. “I hope our guests leave this weekend thinking that this year’s HEC was just as good as theirs, or even better.”
Each year HEC follows a theme for its conference, and the theme for this year was “All in the details,” Amelia Clevenger ’27, director of people and culture, explained. “This year, we’re looking at all the small details that come together to make an event as memorable as possible, and really set you apart from the rest.”
“Our slogan this year was ‘The people, the moment, the brand,’” Clevinger added. “A lot of what we did was focused on high-quality products and being mindful throughout the weekend.”
Details for this weekend included a live installation of HEC’s logo in the Statler lobby, and personalized gift drops that were carefully researched months prior to the guests’ arrivals.
Around 180 members of HEC and an additional 300 volunteers worked to operate the Statler Hotel, hosting a variety of events around the clock — nine business panels, three daily meals, cocktail hours and even miscellaneous events like the Server Derby, which is a race through Ho Plaza where participants dress as servers and carry a bowl of soup.
“This weekend has been very busy,” said Landon Fulkerson ’29, a guest experience manager for HEC. “But it’s a labor of love, and we all really enjoy seeing everything come together.”
Fulkerson also explained how a lot of HEC’s work happens before any guest even steps foot in the Statler — HEC members thoroughly research and correspond with all of the weekend’s guests ahead of time so that they can have a better experience, he added.
“It’s funny to actually meet [the guests] because they hardly know who you are but you know so much about them already,” Fulkerson said. “But it's super rewarding to finally get to meet them, and I just hope all of our guests had as good a time this weekend as we did getting ready for it.”
For Edwards, the eagerness from months of preparation and researching that went into this weekend was matched by a HEC that “has gone beyond anything [he] could have imagined.”
“I came to the hotel school because I wanted to join a community that was passionate about service,” he said. “But this is so much cooler than anything I would have expected at the beginning of the year.”
After the preparation and execution of HEC, the curtains finally closed on Saturday night following a gala and cocktail reception.
“When I was a freshman, I told my parents that HEC was the highlight of my year,” Clevinger said. “It was the moment where I felt most connected to the school and I think being busy with events and activities is a part of the purpose of being a Hotelie.”
Jonathan McCormack is a sophomore in the Cornell College of Arts & Sciences. He is a staff writer for the news department and can be reached at jjm538@cornell.edu.
