A complete academic-grade hospitality curriculum modelled on the way EHL Lausanne, Cornell SHA, and Glion structure their hospitality-management programmes — compressed and operationalised for the African market. Every module carries a worked example, a real anonymised case study, a knowledge check, and a graded assignment. The capstone integrates everything into a defendable feasibility study.
Each tier builds on the previous. You progress at your own pace — pass each module's knowledge check and submit each graded assignment to advance.
Real-estate vs operating-business duality. Why hotels behave differently from offices, retail, residential.
Star ratings, chain scales, soft brands, lifestyle segments. How positioning drives ADR potential.
From idea to stabilisation. The 18-stage critical path every hotel project follows.
Why some sites print money and others struggle. Catchment, accessibility, competing supply.
Departmental P&L. Undistributed expenses. Fixed charges. The format every hotel investor reads.
Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, TrevPAR, GOPPAR. What each measures, what each misses.
Private equity, sovereign funds, family offices, REITs, DFIs. Who funds what kind of project.
Global brands, regional brands, soft brands, independents. The strategic implications of each.
How professionals assess a real site and define the competitive set that frames every assumption.
Source markets, seasonality, induced demand. How to build a forecast that survives investor due diligence.
Worked example: 120-key Mombasa beachfront. Every section, every input, every output.
Assumptions, drivers, stress tests. Building an 8-year USALI P&L that holds up under scrutiny.
Income capitalisation, DCF, comparable sales. The triangulation method and how to defend each weight.
BAR, segmentation, displacement, length-of-stay controls. The discipline that lifts RevPAR by 8–14%.
Covers, average-spend, USALI-aligned departmental P&L. Why F&B can make or break the bottom line.
EDGE Advanced, LEED, Green Key, Earthcheck. Choosing the right framework for your project and market.
Anatomy of an HMA. Base fee, incentive fee, FF&E reserve, owner protections, performance tests.
Fee stack, area-of-protection, brand standards governance. When franchise beats HMA and when it doesn't.
RFP design, competitive bidding, scoring rubrics. How to run an operator beauty parade that ends well.
Critical-path scheduling, training cascade, soft opening. The 90 days before doors open define Year 1.
Visual, service, operational. How non-compliance triggers cure periods and what it costs the owner.
Owner-side oversight. Monthly review packs, intervention triggers, the asset manager's toolkit.
Asset deal vs share deal, due diligence, deal protection. How hotels are bought and sold in practice.
Pandemic playbooks, force-majeure clauses, business-continuity planning. Lessons from 2020 onwards.
Every student takes a real African site and prepares a full feasibility study, a complete financial model, an operator recommendation, and a risk register. You then defend your work orally before a panel of two faculty members and present executive-summary slides. Graded against a published rubric. Passing the capstone is what qualifies you for the Certificate of Completion; achieving 80% or above earns the Distinction designation.
Every module — Foundation through Advanced — follows the same eight-block structure. This consistency means you always know where you are and what's expected.
Three measurable outcomes — what you will be able to do after the module.
The real-world commercial stake — why a developer or investor pays for this competence.
The substantive material with worked numerical examples — 1,500 to 2,500 words of primary teaching.
A specific named, numerically-complete walk-through. Real numbers, real decisions.
A short anonymised real-world case from across Africa with discussion questions.
Eight to ten multiple-choice questions, half scenario-based, half conceptual.
A practical task in the platform, submitted to your lecturer for rubric-based grading.
Five to eight industry references — HVS, STR, World Bank, EDGE manuals.
Every certificate is wax-sealed, hand-signed by a HotelCompass director, and bears a unique reference number verifiable on our public verify page. Free for students at accredited institution partners.
A parallel 12-module lecturer track runs alongside the student curriculum, covering platform onboarding, teaching the three tiers, designing assignments, grading rubrics, running viva voce examinations, and using HotelCompass AI as a teaching assistant.
Free for students enrolled at our partner institutions. Self-paced learners can access all 24 modules with a discounted individual subscription. Both pathways lead to the same verified Certificate of Completion.
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