Hospitality & Tourism Student Club members Raquel Wheeler, Kyle Pacheco and Annadine Benavidez attended IMEX in Las Vegas in October. IMEX is the largest hospitality tradeshow and conference in North America held since 2003 with over 3,100 exhibitors and 5,000 attendees. The European show, comparable in size is held in Frankfurt, Germany.
The conference has a special student two-day meeting called Future Leaders Forum in which 100 students are invited to attend from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. Our students were the only community college representatives invited to this prestigious event. This is an outstanding career development program, offering inspirational sessions from industry experts on key topics, insightful international and regional overviews of the hospitality and meeting industry as well as opportunities to make valuable contacts for future employment.
Students were taken onto the tradeshow floor with appointments to meet selected international vendors and destinations. Additionally, students went to the daily Opening Keynote Presentations which included, Todd Buchholz who is a former White House senior economic advisor, Tiger hedge fund managing director and best-selling author.
The Hospitality & Tourism Club plans to have another prize-filled raffle in the spring of 2018 to earn funds for transportation and accommodations for students to attend IMEX in 2018. We hope we can count on the entire campus’ participation.
PHOTO: Left to right, Raquel Wheeler, Annadine Benavidez and Kyle Pacheco.