The 1960s are rightly remembered as a decade in which everything changed. Popular culture set about challenging all that had gone before with new music, art and literature, while civil rights movements across the globe swelled in the spirit of revolution.   

Although the decade will forever be associated with those who provided the sounds, colors and oratory of the time, the 60s were as remarkable an era for the hospitality industry.     

 The development of highways and commercial flights opened up the possibility of travel to millions and triggered the mass expansion of tourism and hotel chains.

It was against this backdrop of transformation that Walter Hunziker and Frederic Tissot founded Glion Institute of Higher Education in 1962. The vision was simple, to create the world’s finest hospitality management school, and to educate with an ethos of enthusiasm, respect for others, self-discipline and a sense of shared identity.

50-years later, and hospitality and tourism has become the world’s largest service sector industry, while Glion has grown to accommodate some 1600 campus students, and teaches online to industry professionals in 61 countries .    

A first cohort of just 14 students has grown to over 9000 alumni, all of whom have been educated with the founder’s philosophy, or the ‘Glion spirit’ as central to their learning.

Such is the sense of shared identity, that the Glion alumni network (GAA) is now used as a potent networking tool among former students.

Claudio Zucco, Director of Alumni Relations & lecturer in Tourism at Glion Institute of Higher Education, extols the benefits of networking born from shared belonging:

“The Glion spirit encourages solidarity amongst its alumni. They support each other in the professional world without necessarily knowing each other because they are linked by common values which bring down the barriers which usually create a distance between strangers. Practically, this support consists in pushing the CV’s of alumni into the right hands or in hiring other alumni.”

 If networking can be understood as the acquisition of contacts for the exchange of information, each member acts almost as an antenna able to detect job opportunities or business opportunities for other members. As Zucco suggests:

“Alumni can become valuable contacts to other alumni if communication is authentic, if the shared information is reliable, if the members of the network are available, which implies knowing how to listen, and therefore accepting people. With this in mind, alumni will never be strangers and the words ‘hello, I am from Glion’ will continue opening doors for mutual benefit.”

The value of networks such as Glion’s has been analyzed by sociologists like Mark Granovetter (1983, John Wiley & Sons) who argues in his article ‘The Strength Of Weak Ties’ that networks of people who rarely meet but have commonalities are professionally more fruitful than those with ‘strong ties’ because innovative ideas can be easily introduced and a variety of viewpoints can be discussed.

It is perhaps fitting then that as Glion moves into its 50th year, its GAA network – which can trace its origins to the spirit of change brought about in the 60s – continues to transform the hospitality industry, one alumnus at a time.