At annual event gathering hospitality professionals from all around the world, Hospitality ON, the international hospitality and tourism media, has awarded Glion Institute of Higher Education alumni Rita Amorim and Bonn Krongsak Paramacharoenroj the trophy of Best Professional Success.
The Best Professional Success trophy is awarded to young professionals under 30 years old who have been working for a maximum of 5 years.
The candidates are assessed on 3 criteria: the quality of their academic results as students, the exemplary start of their professional career, and the efficiency of the actions and projects they achieved within their company.
Both winners of the prize, the Portuguese Rita Amorim and Bonn Krongsak Paramacharoenroj, from Thailand, were raised in families of hoteliers and always dreamt of a career in hospitality, bringing them to study at Glion.
Rita graduated from the Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management with a specialization in International Hotel Development and Asset Management, in 2019. Only six months after entering Accor as Junior Cluster Revenue Manager, Rita is promoted Cluster Revenue Manager, thanks to her exceptional performance. While Covid pandemic was striking, slowing the growth of the hospitality industry, Rita managed to guide the hotels of her portfolio through the process of recovery, while playing an instrumental role in driving a variety of business-critical projects associated with service provision and revenue. In her current role, she oversees a portfolio of properties across different markets in the UK, which generate an annual turnover of over £20 million in rooms’ revenue. In parallel to her position at Accor, she is a consultant for Arribas Sintra Hotel for their Commercial Strategy and, most recently, began her own entrepreneurial journey as co-founder of Amorim & Petit Solutions, a hospitality and real estate consulting company.
The other victorious candidate, Bonn Krongsak Paramacharoenroj, attended the Bachelor’s in International Hospitality Business, with a specialization in Real Estate Finance & Revenue Management at Glion Institute of Higher Education, which he graduated from in 2016. He obtained his first job through the referral of a Glion alumna, as an associate at the consulting company C9 Hotelworks, Asia’s leading hospitality consulting firm providing market research, feasibility study, valuation and asset management services across Asia Pacific. This opportunity is the perfect example of the influence of the Glion’s alumni network.
After two and a half successful years in his first role, Bonn joined Onyx Hospitality Group, Thailand’s leading hotel owner and operator, where he started off as an Associate Director for Onyx’s lifestyle brand partner Yoo Hotels and Resorts. After months of excellent performance, he was promoted to oversee all Onyx’s brands, landing his dream job at a young age as a Director of Development, managing a portfolio of over 80 hotels in Asia. Today at Onyx, he oversees all hotel development aspects of the company from sourcing hotel deals, reviewing technical plans, planning financial feasibility studies, preparing management contracts, to managing relationships with the owners, hereby embracing the financial side of hotel development.
At its recent recruitment day event in November this year, Glion had the great number of 220 companies and properties from 26 different countries attending, with the purpose of meeting the students and recruiting the new talents who will be joining their companies. The positions offered to Glion students open employability to a whole range of managerial and strategic roles such as demonstrated with Rita’s strategic position at Accor and Bonn’s role in the development of Onyx.
“At 26 years old, I feel I have been fast-tracked as I learned throughout my studies in Glion, one of the world’s best hospitality schools, both textbook theories and practicalities, which later became very applicable in my career” says Bonn.
Within the 4 finalists for the Best Professional Success prize, 2 alumni were from Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, institution part of the Sommet Education network, along with Glion.
“I find myself extremely thankful for being recognized among such esteemed peers.”, shared Rita.
