Tim Oberli smiles broadly at the man across the gold-plated desk, expertly checking him in and showing him to the executive suite, while simultaneously handling a boisterous man demanding a restaurant reservation.
This is not a classy hotel, but rather a set erected on the upper floor of a red-carpeted casino in the picturesque Swiss city of Montreux, and the scene is playing out in front of dozens of spectators.
Oberli is among 16 young people from around the globe gathered here seeking to be crowned the world’s best receptionist, with their unique know-how featuring for only the second time at the WorldSkills Competition.
Photo: AFP
The championships in dozens of vocational skills, ranging from 3D digital game art to cooking, to electrical installations, are usually held simultaneously every other year in one city.
Last year’s edition, which had been scheduled to take place in Shanghai, was postponed and then canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions, prompting 15 different countries to step up this year to host about 1,000 participants aged 22 or younger competing for world titles in 61 different skills from Sept. 7 to Nov. 26.
Taiwan’s Lei Feng-yue (雷豐嶽) won the first gold of the championships on Sept. 11 after a four-day prototype modeling competition in Bern.
Switzerland, a country renowned for its luxury hotels and world-class hotel management schools, is hosting 15 of the competitions, including four grueling days testing hotel reception skills, which started on Thursday and ends today.
“I felt very nervous,” said Oberli, the Swiss contestant, after the first day.
It did not show, as the tall, athletic-looking 19-year-old with his impeccable navy-blue suit and carefully combed blond hair seemed at ease in his mock reception. Focusing fully on the customer before him, he described the sights and expertly organized a wake-up call and ordered a taxi, while appearing oblivious to the four judges seated to his right and the spectators lined behind a blue ribbon barrier to his left.
On the other side of a black cloth divider, Moe Omori of Japan stood behind her own desk, nervously handling the checkout of an unhappy customer, as another guest called down to say she had fallen in her room and hit her head.
In an adjoining room, other contestants, such as Taiwan’s Liu Mei-chun (劉玫均), and those from countries including Kazakhstan, Spain and Singapore sit at desks tackling so-called back-office tasks like complex reservations.
“The competition is a big deal,” Oberli said, pointing out that he has been training for this ever since winning the national SwissSkills competition two years ago.
He has been practicing for even longer, saying he remembers spending many summer vacations as a child perched on a chair in a hotel lobby, taking notes.
“I was always impressed,” he said, recalling how he had dreamt of having his own hotel one day, imagining the uniforms, the name-tags and the room categories.
“And when I got my first computer, I designed a registration card,” he added.
Additional reporting by staff writer
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS