Hotel Industry Foundations and Introduction to Analytics (HIFIA)

The Hotel Industry Foundations and Introduction to Analytics certificate program provides a thorough introduction to the math required by a hotel or tourism industry professional, to the reports that are used in the hotel and tourism industry and to the analytic skills used by industry professionals. The HIFIA helps students appreciate that the hotel and tourism industry rely heavily upon data and the ability to analyze that data. Although the HIFIA has less of an emphasis on math, reports and analyzing data, it still builds a solid foundation on hotel industry basics. The training content is appropriate for two-year schools, vocational institutions and colleges in developing areas of the world.  Qualifying instructors and students receive a certificate. Their names and schools are listed on the AHLEI website and they can include the HIFIA accomplishment on their resume/CV.

The HIFIA certificate program is based upon five content areas:

• The Players in the Hotel Industry – In this section we discuss chains and parent companies, management companies and owner companies, the different operation types and define Independent hotels
• Categorization Used by the Hotel Industry – various ways hotels are defined and categorized, both geographically and non-geographically
• Introduction to Benchmarking – ways the hotel and tourism industry compare performance to competitors.  We discuss different levels and types of benchmarking, introduce competitive sets, talk about how to create a competitive set using the Four “P”s, rules for creating and changing competitive sets and why hotels may want multiple competitive sets
• Intro to Hotel Math – an introduction to key performance indicators, formulas, and math-related terms.  We discuss raw property data, key performance indicators, percent changes, date related definitions and multiple time periods, how competitive set and industry data are computed, indexes and ranking information.
• Intro to Industry Reports – an introduction to reports that are used to measure performance of hotels and markets including STAR Reports, Trend Reports, Pipeline Reports, HOST/Profitability Reports and Destination Reports

A detailed training content outline is available upon request.

The HIFIA certificate is US$60.  Financial need-based scholarships are available.  A discounted rate is also available for emerging nations. The exam is 50 questions – multiple choice, with a 90-minute time limit.  A minimum score of 70% is needed to pass the exam.

Instructors that would like to offer the HIFIA certificate training to students at their school can attend a CHIA certification train-the-trainer workshop to learn the material, as we do not specifically conduct HIFIA training sessions.  Upon completing the training, an instructor may also take the exam at no cost to receive their own HIFIA certificate.

To discuss how the HIFIA certificate program and how it may be introduced in your program or help with any questions, please email us or call +1 615 824 8664 x3329.