July 2021 saw the Les Roches Marbella LVII graduation ceremony take place at Marbella’s Palacio de Congresos. In this three-part series we’re calling “Looking back and heading forward”, we sat down with some students to reminisce about their time with us. Our second featured student, Ismael Valle, is a career changer and student of the Master’s in International Hotel Management.
Ismael Ruiz Valle may be one of the bravest students we’ve had in some time. After two decades of work experience in IT, Ismael decided it was time to make a change. He decided to pursue his passion, hospitality management. This year Ismael is graduating from the Master’s in International Hotel Management at Les Roches Marbella and he stands for one of our most important pillars: be fearless.
Feelings about graduating from Les Roches
I have mixed emotions because this means the end of the trip after a long year. I’m not upset but a bit sad because I’ve had a lot of experiences with my classmates. On the other hand, this means the start of a new career in hospitality so I’m very excited about that.
What I would say to myself before starting Les Roches
If I started again tomorrow for this Master’s, I would say to myself enjoy this whole trip from the very beginning. You’re going to meet different people from different nationalities, from your classmates to your teachers. You’re going to learn different points of views about the same subject, and this is going to enrich your life – so enjoy this trip.
Enhance your knowledge of room operations, finance, sustainability and more with our Master’s in International Hotel Management.
Biggest challenge
I think the biggest challenge for me was communication. The master’s degree is fully in English, and all the interactions with teachers and classmates are in English. I was afraid that I would not be able to follow along. But everything went smoothly and it was amazing, I had no issues with that.
The “mum and dad” story
There was another student around my age, her name is Olga. Our classmates started calling us mum and dad. It was funny because in the second semester, Olga had to change her shift so she and I weren’t in the same class anymore.
Still we kept in touch, going to lunch and working on class projects. And when our classmates saw us together they would say that we had split but we remained on good terms!
How Les Roches teaches motivation
There’s a word stuck in my brain regarding motivation, it’s “attitude”. We learned how to have a positive attitude, even when we fail. We will fail, but we have to have the right attitude to learn from those mistakes and make ourselves better.
Plans for the future
I think that housekeeping is the core of the hotel, it’s a key department with which every other department has a relation. So I think that starting with housekeeping would be a good option for me and then climbing up the ladder to managerial positions.
But since I have a background in IT, I’m good at spotting where things go wrong. So I think my future is based on consulting, going to small independent hotels and doing the job of improving operations and making them run smoothly.
Want to keep reading about Les Roches?
