Honor Moment | BHI Got Awarded as Leading Brand of Private Universities in 2025 at Tencent News Education New Echo Summit
Recently, the Tencent News Education New Echo Summit was held in Beijing. Themed “Reshaping the Evolutionary Power of Education,” the summit gathered numerous industry technology innovation pioneers, experts, and scholars to jointly explore the development direction of the education industry in the new technological environment and the trends of future talent cultivation. Beijing Hospitality Institute was awarded the honorary title of “Leading Brand of Private Universities in 2025.” Xu Longyang, Dean of Academic Affairs Department of BHI, and Sun Dongliang, Assistant Director of Business Development Department and Director of the Admissions Office, accepted the award on behalf of BHI and took an interview from Tencent News Education.
The Tencent News Education New Echo Summit originated from the Echo China Education Gala, which has been successfully held for 17 sessions as one of the most influential brands of Tencent News Education. It provides a valuable platform for education practitioners to share educational ideas and discuss educational topics, while also offering important opportunities to promote educational reform and innovation, and achieve high-quality education development.
Building on the“Echo” brand spirit, this summit gathered industry technology innovation pioneers, experts, and scholars to explore the development direction of the education industry in the new technological environment and discuss future talent cultivation trends around the theme of “Reshaping the Evolutionary Power of Education.”The event had feature keynote speeches and roundtable discussions, and several renowned figures in the education field were invited to share their insights and experiences.
Xu Longyang was interviewed
Sun Dongliang was interviewed
The following is the sharing by Xu Longyang:
What are the most prominent strengths and characteristics of Beijing Hospitality Institute? For instance, in terms of curriculum system, faculty team, educational mode, or resource integration, what are your differentiated competitive advantages?
BHI has always advocated “educating students through teaching” rather than “teaching students through education.” The difference between educating people through teaching and teaching people through education lies not only in the adjustment of word order, but also in the innovation of educational philosophy. BHI has a couplet, with the first line being“combining knowledge with practice, applying knowledge in practice”and the second line being“being a decent person, doing decent things.”To practice “educating students through teaching,” we have two core support systems: one is the world-leading talent cultivation mode, and the other is the formative campus culture.
The first is our globally leading talent cultivation mode. BHI advocates “learning by doing and doing by learning,” and all majors we have are equipped with practical laboratories.Taking the hospitality management major as an example, we have built a four-star standard training hotel, which contains a wine and cigar bar, Chinese and Western restaurants, coffee laboratory, guest rooms, and a banquet hall.These sites serve as both operational spaces and classrooms, where students can learn and carry out operations under the guidance of teachers. The hospitality management major has three practical sessions, covering both on-campus practical training and off-campus internships, with a total practical hours accounting for an average of 55%, effectively preventing students from being fastidious but incompetent.
The second is the formative campus culture. BHI is committed to cultivating “ladies and gentlemen”and has established 28 behavioral etiquette norms and over 200 behavioral standards. Teachers implement the“dual responsibilities for one position,” not only imparting knowledge to students but also guiding them to develop good behaviors. For example, if a student makes a mistake on campus, such as breaking a cup in the cafeteria, we will applaud to cultivate their self-confidence. BHI has the core values of“respect, professionalism, responsibility,” and it also possesses four core strengths: globally leading curriculum design, self-complied textbooks, combination of practical and theoretical teachers, and unique campus culture.
When it comes to our faculty, we have nationally renowned top experts and scholars, as well as senior executives from the front lines of industries. Directors, general managers, deputy general managers, and even group vice presidents from the hotel and pan-service industries, as well as industry professionals who have served as bank presidents in the finance field, are all part of our faculty team.
Our cultivation of students follows the “5H Concept”: the first is Hand, emphasizing the cultivation of students’ hands-on ability to solve problems; the second is Head, encouraging students to think deeply and understand not only what happens but also why it happens.. For example, hot issues in the hotel industry will be brought into the classroom immediately, allowing students to consider the root causes of the problems and give out solutions; the third is Heart, wishing the students study and work with enthusiasm and love; the fourth is Health, advocating that each student should have a sport and a hobby they are good at; the fifth is Happiness, allowing students to grow up healthily and happily in BHI. This“5H Concept”aims to cultivate students’ execution ability, critical thinking ability, sense of responsibility, endurance, and intrinsic motivation.
With these advantages, BHI’s hospitality management major has been approved by the Ministry of Education for the national-level first-class undergraduate major construction , which is only one in Beijing's private universities to receive this prestigious honor. BHI is also called as the “Huangpu Military Academy of the hotel industry” by the industry. We are committed to cultivating students into socialist builders and successors who are well-rounded in morality, intelligence, physique, aesthetics, and labor, and to creating senior management talents who possess good professional ethics, professional qualities, and vocational skills, and who will be staying, developing and popular in the hotel industry.
In the process of educational development, it is inevitable to face challenges such as policy adjustments, market competition, or technological integration. What typical challenges has BHI encountered? And what strategies have been employed to effectively address them and achieve breakthroughs?
Adhering to the concept of “educating students through teaching,” and focusing on cultivating talents who will be staying, developing and popular in the industry, this unwavering commitment to education is not easy. BHI does not blindly set up popular majors. Doing so may seem easy for the school, but it is not good to the long-term development of students, nor does it align with the national talent needs and industry development trends.
The positioning of BHI is very clear: on the school level, it serves the construction of the “four centers”of the capital, with a particular focus on the positioning of the international exchange center; on the education level, it cultivates professional talents for the hotel and pan-service industries; on the student level, it aims to help students grow to be useful persons, get smooth employment, and achieve long-term development.
BHI has been deeply committed to one field for almost 20 years. Initially, we only offered one major of hospitality management, with sub-orientations of human resources, finance, marketing, and so on. Twenty years later, we have expanded these sub-orientations into independent majors, but we been always focusing on cultivating talents in the hotel and service industries. Students majoring in finance, human resources, marketing, and other fields also need to take the practical operations in rotation modules. Many students and parents have doubts about this. In fact, this design is intended to allow students to better understand the business operations in enterprises. For example, students majoring in finance not only need to be able to do accounting and prepare financial statements, but also need to be able to understand the business through the financial statements. Students of this major not only learn the Chinese financial accounting system, but also learn the accounting system of the American hotel industry. Majors of human resources, marketing, etc., also follow this design concept.
In BHI, the curriculum has always been closely in line with the development of the times and industry demands. Some may ask, why would an arts and business school like ours offer AI courses? Our focus on AI training for students is not on the technical level, but rather on its practical application level. The core is to enhance students’ comprehensive abilities. In the classroom, we do not forbid students from using AI. This poses higher demands on teachers but can effectively improve students’ learning efficiency and abilities.
Nowadays, with the rapid development of live streaming technology on platforms such as Tiktok and Rednote, traditional industries like hotels are in urgent need of talents who understand both business and live streaming technology. We have invested millions to build a new media laboratory and offer relevant courses, and will continue to advance the second phase of the project this year.
Due to our consistent focus on industry needs and the concept of “educating students through teaching,”BHI graduates are highly favored by enterprises. Every year, hundreds of companies come to our school for recruitment, providing students with excellent employment and development prospects. BHI has established strategic partnerships with hundreds of enterprises across nine major industries, including education, design, finance. etc.. Our graduates have a wide range of employment opportunities, entering not only the hotel industry, but also education, finance, aviation, exhibition, and other industries. In recent years, even the presidents of some education companies and design companies have come to our school for recruitment in person, which makes us deeply gratified.
The following is the sharing of Sun Dongliang:
BHI was founded in 2008 in Daxing District, Beijing, and it is a municipal full-time general undergraduate institution in Beijing. BHI concentrates on the cultivation of management talents in the hotel and pan-service industries, adhering to the educational philosophy of “educating students through teaching.” BHI advocates providing wholehearted service for students and regarding students as the masters of the school. BHI pursues the core values of “respect, professionalism, and responsibility,”and fulfills the school motto of “combining knowledge with practice, applying knowledge in practice.” With the outstanding achievements and profound accumulation in the cultivation of management talents in the hotel and pan-service industries, BHI is called the“Huangpu Military Academy” of China’s hotel industry by the industry. Its hospitality management major is a national first-class undergraduate major, and its financial management major is a Beijing first-class undergraduate major. BHI has been highly recognized by the industry, parents, and education departments in terms of cultivating international and practical management talents. With years of development, BHI is committed to building a distinctive, industry-recognized, teacher-student-loved, world-class international, employment-oriented and application-oriented undergraduate university.
What is the biggest change of BHI in 2025, or what achievements it has achieved?
In fact, under the background of profound changes unseen in a century, what I particularly want to introduce to you is BHI’s perseverance and original aspiration.
Along the educational journey of BHI in the past nearly 20 years, it has consistently dedicated itself to cultivating high-end talents in the hotel and pan-service industries. This shows not only BHI’s commitment to the industry but also the steadfast adherence to its original educational vision. BHI has achieved numerous achievements embodying BHI mode, which are specifically manifested in two aspects: talent cultivation and campus culture.
BHI has developed a globally leading talent cultivation mode, namely the “immersive” application-orientated undergraduate teaching mode: the core curriculum and teaching plan are fully aligned with international first-class application-orientated universities, and have undergone localization upgrades that combine theory with practice. “Immersive” on-site teaching is conducted in the on-campus star-rated teaching hotel, truly realizing the integration of learning and practicing, and the integration of teaching and operation. This ensures that students’ knowledge and skills keep up with their professional qualities, and their theory can be integrated with practice. What’s more, while students are learning their major knowledge, they can also acquire practical knowledge and skills related to hotel management. This dual-major background cultivation of“+hotel management” will lay a solid foundation for students’ future career development, doing a great favor to the employment-oriented "BHI model,” and enabling them to stand out in various industries.
The second aspect is the “formative” campus culture of BHI: BHI advocates a formative professional-ethics-oriented campus culture, helping every student grow both physically and mentally through a series of measures. This teaches students to be both a right person and do things rightly, cultivating them to be well-behaved, have strong practical abilities, use their brains and heart when doing things, and be positive and optimistic. It can be said that the cultivation mode of BHI enables students to achieve leapfrogging in both studying abroad and employment, ensuring worry-free employment and studying abroad.
The theme of this year’s meeting is “Reshaping the Evolutionary Power of Education.” How do you understand this theme?
I personally believe that the core of “Reshaping the evolutionary power of education”lies in breaking the path dependence of traditional education mode. Instead, we should build a new educational ecosystem that adapts to industrial development and talent demands along with the changes in this era. For business education centered on hotel management as involved in BHI, this “evolution”is not a denial of tradition, but rather a triple reshaping: first, it reshapes the goal of talent cultivation, shifting from cultivating single-service management talents to compound high-end management talents with international vision, digital capabilities, and humanistic literacy; second, it reshapes the core logic of teaching, shifting from knowledge impartation to ability cultivation, strengthening problem-solving abilities in practical scenarios; third, it reshapes the boundaries of the educational ecosystem, breaking down the barriers between universities, industries, and international resources, achieving resonance between education and industry.
With honor upon our shoulders and a mission at hand, being awarded the “2025 Leading Private University Brand”is a high recognition of BHI’s deep commitment to hotel management education and its unique educational philosophy. It is also a spur and expectation for the BHI’s future development.
In the future, BHI will take this honor as a new starting point, continue to focus on the characteristics of hospitality management major, deepen the integration of industry and education and the innovation in talent cultivation models, adhere to the original intention of educating people, strengthen brand responsibility, refine teaching quality with higher standards, cultivate talents for industry with more practical measures, and strive to continue leading the way on the path of high-quality development of private higher education, injecting more BHI strength into the development of the hotel and cultural tourism industry and the construction of a powerful educational nation.
