The Culinary Academy of Las Vegas and Amadeus, together with the Culinary Union are pleased to announce a first-of-its-kind partnership between the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas and Amadeus to support the continued post-pandemic recovery of the hotel industry and to connect hospitality workers with good union jobs and on-the-job training. The Culinary Academy of Las Vegas will add Amadeus’ HotSOS Housekeeping software solution to its training curriculum to pro-vide job training to youth, adults, and displaced workers. This new partnership is the result of work by researchers from five universities who study the implementation of technology in the hospitality field and will assist in evaluating and modifying the training over the next year to improve its effec-tiveness.  

Culinary Academy of Las Vegas students will receive hands-on training with Amadeus’ HotSOS Housekeeping solution. The HotSOS software, widely used in Las Vegas hotel properties, allows guest room attendants to log and manage housekeeping assignments, complete maintenance tasks, and respond to service orders and guest requests, ensuring a positive guest experience while tens of thousands of unionized workers, under collectively bargained contract language, maintain independent self-sequencing and a safe workload.

“Culinary Union contract language protects workers and ensures technology works for Culinary Un-ion members, while achieving premiere customer service quality with daily room cleaning,” said Ted Pappageorge, Secretary-Treasurer for the Culinary Union. “This partnership is an opportunity to provide housekeeping trainees with better understanding and skills and gives workers an oppor-tunity to be better prepared in job training and job placement, and to support in worker retention efforts. We recognize Amadeus for its expert trainers, the academic researchers for bringing us all together, and the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas for ensuring the next generation of hospitality workers are set up for success in Nevada’s #1 industry.”

“We pride ourselves on providing students with the best tools possible to succeed in an evolving hospitality industry. Having Amadeus as a partner is a significant boost for our programming, pre-paring students for long-term career success through early exposure and thorough training using industry-leading software and technology,” said Ryan Brux, Curriculum and Continuing Educa-tion Program Manager at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas.

“This partnership demonstrates our commitment to the social and economic recovery of the travel and hotel industry. We are excited to provide training for HotSOS Housekeeping as an opportunity for people to find their next role or career in hospitality. After completing the course, students will be ready to enter the job market with the skills and confidence they need to become an asset to any hotel,” said Terri Lynn Beasley, Global Head of Training and Hospitality at Amadeus.

In collaboration with UNITE HERE, researchers from Carnegie Mellon, New Mexico State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Michigan State University, spearheaded this partnership as part of a study on preparing hospitality workers and workplaces for a more technologically rich environment. The team is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Fu-ture of Work initiative.

“Too often workers, like housekeepers, are given minimal on the job training about how to use tech-nology. We are proud to be able to contribute to this effort to provide new technology skills to the women and men who are being trained to do one of the hardest jobs in hospitality,” said Jodi Forlizzi, the Herbert A. Simon Professor in Computer Science and Human Computer Interac-tion at Carnegie Mellon University.