Balancing Tradition and Innovation in Hotel Ezra Cornell: Incorporating Technology Initiatives Into Event Planning and Management

Trina Ham, an undergraduate student in the role of Communications Director for the annual Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC) event at Cornell University, struggled to incorporate technology into the event’s operations, while concurrently fulfilling her responsibilities in public relations and communications. Keeping up with contemporary practices in the events management industry required a management structure and new technologies that were untraditional to HEC; nevertheless, Trina poured her energies into creating an online platform through which the HEC attendees would easily access information. Although successful in introducing information technology to HEC, this initiative was riddled with difficulties including human resource management issues.

One year later, student George Earl, the director for the newly formed IT department, aims to improve the HEC customer experience by extending Trina’s ideas. What ...