Students at HIM in Montreux, Switzerland are tracked “using a radar map of soft and hard skills,” Dean Claire Jollain says. “They can see where they’re growing — and where they’re not. It’s not just about grades. It’s about building real professional maturity over time.” Courtesy photos
In the picturesque lakeside town of Montreux, Switzerland, a small, globally diverse business school is quietly rewriting the undergraduate playbook. HIM Business School — formerly Hotel Institute Montreux — was once known for training hoteliers. But today, under the leadership of Dean Claire Jollain, it’s preparing a new generation of globally minded, tech-savvy business professionals.
That includes expanding into graduate education: In summer 2026, HIM will launch its first master’s degree program, focused on AI literacy for business professionals and delivered across Switzerland and China. The new offering will build on the same experiential model that has made its undergraduate program distinctive.
“We shifted from being a hotel school to a business school three years ago,” Jollain tells Poets&Quants. “But we kept what made the hotel school special — this strong, hands-on, vocational model of learning. It’s our foundation.”
Claire Jollain: “We shifted from being a hotel school to a business school three years ago. But we kept what made the hotel school special — this strong, hands-on, vocational model of learning. It’s our foundation”
6 MONTHS IN CLASS, 6 MONTHS IN THE FIELD
Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, HIM (short for Hotel Institute Montreux) offers a Bachelor of Business Administration with a unique structure: students alternate between six months of intensive on-campus study and six months of full-time internship, every year for three years. “It’s not an add-on,” says Jollain. “It’s built into the DNA of our program. We don’t wait until year three to let students experience the real world.”
Each internship is carefully calibrated to match the student’s year and skill level. In Year One, the goal is emotional intelligence, customer contact, and soft-skill development. In Year Two and Year Three, students move into more industry-specific roles, often aligned with their major. Every internship earns academic credit and includes formal evaluations from employers.
“We track students using a radar map of soft and hard skills,” Jollain explains. “They can see where they’re growing — and where they’re not. It’s not just about grades. It’s about building real professional maturity over time.”
That first internship — often in hospitality — is where students get tested. “We want them to deal with the ‘naughty’ clients,” says Jollain, laughing. “Because that’s where confidence and resilience are built. Everyone can manage happy customers. Not everyone can turn a bad experience into a loyal one.”
“We stay in touch with students while they’re on placement. If there’s a problem, we intervene,” says Jollain. “This generation, especially after Covid, needs support to develop the kind of interpersonal skills that can’t be taught in slideshows.” Courtesy photo
A CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE — AND CARE
HIM is small by design. With about 400 students representing 52 nationalities, it fosters a tight-knit, immersive learning environment. Students live on campus, eat on campus, and interact with everyone from faculty to the restaurant staff to the overnight duty manager. “We like to say it’s a home away from home,” Jollain says.
But it’s also rigorous. Students wear business attire to class. If they show up late, the door is closed. After multiple absences, they may be dismissed from the program. “It’s tough love,” says Jollain. “We don’t do this to punish. We do it because business doesn’t wait — and our students learn that early.”
That discipline, she says, comes with deep personal connection. “I know about 70% of my students by name. Our classes are small — 30 to 35 students maximum. We take the time to know them, support them, and push them.”
HIM Business School. Courtesy photo
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: NOT CASES, BUT COMPANIES
HIM prides itself on offering real-world projects over abstract case studies. Students majoring in finance have worked with luxury brands like Bulgari and Richemont. Others have partnered with Swiss and global firms to solve live challenges in marketing, HR, and operations.
“We don’t just talk about business,” Jollain says. “We bring business into the classroom.” That philosophy extends to the faculty themselves — most of whom come from industry and are trained to teach.
And when internships go wrong — as sometimes happens — the school steps in. “We stay in touch with students while they’re on placement. If there’s a problem, we intervene,” says Jollain. “This generation, especially after Covid, needs support to develop the kind of interpersonal skills that can’t be taught in slideshows.”
TECH-FORWARD & HUMAN-CENTERED: AI AT HIM
While many schools are just beginning to grapple with generative AI, HIM has already embedded it into the curriculum. The school offers a course called Innovating with AI, focused not on coding, but on how AI affects user experience, business processes, and decision-making.
More uniquely, HIM has developed its own in-house generative chatbot — CasaGPT, named for faculty member Antoine Casanova. But this isn’t your typical AI assistant. “When you ask it a question, it replies, ‘Why do you need to know that?’” Jollain explains. “It forces students to think about their motivations, their reasoning, their assumptions.”
For Jollain, the real danger of AI isn’t cheating — it’s learned helplessness. “I worry that students will stop trusting their own minds. Our goal is to help them work with AI, not be replaced by it.”
A CURRICULUM THAT CHANGES WITH THE MARKET
Using proprietary tools, HIM analyzes thousands of job postings each month across industries and countries, mapping which hard and soft skills employers demand in real time. “We compare that with our curriculum,” says Jollain. “If there’s a gap, we fix it. Quickly.”
That agility recently led the school to adjust its talent management specialization after discovering employers also expected graduates to know HR software — something missing from the original syllabus.
The data also flows both ways. “We showed it to our industry partners,” says Jollain. “And they realized they weren’t even listing things like ‘resilience’ in their job posts — yet they all said it’s what’s most lacking in graduates.”
THE NEXT CHAPTER: A MASTER’S DEGREE ON THE HORIZON
Though HIM has so far focused exclusively on undergraduate education, that will change in summer 2026, when the school launches its first master’s program. The new, as-yet-unnamed offering will focus on AI literacy for business professionals, not engineers, and will be built around HIM’s strengths in user experience, customer-centric thinking, and experiential learning, Jollain tells P&Q.
The program will be split between Switzerland and China, giving students access to global networks and real-time exposure to dynamic business environments. Jollain says the master’s is designed for early-career professionals with at least some work experience.
“We’re not trying to become a giant graduate school,” she says. “We’re building something targeted for early-career professionals who want to understand how to lead in an AI-driven world. Just like our undergrad program, it will be global, immersive, and grounded in real business needs.”
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