by Alex Kinderman, September 14, 2020

Adapting to online courses this summer has been quite a journey and a challenge but ultimately rewarding. Capstone was a huge part of my online classes and it was great developing a concept over the past six months. Over many zoom meetings and discussions with my team, our concept ended up with Green Haus Hotel which is a 3-star midscale Sustainable Urban Micro-hotel. It is located in the heart of the West Loop Fulton Market District which is now home to the booming tech and business centers of Chicago. There are 176 micro-rooms and an Average Daily Rate of $157. Amenities include a business and sociable lounge area, leasable retail space, and a 500 sq ft meeting room. Featured on the property we also had two restaurants Rootage and the Wasted Flower. The primary reasoning we had for using micro-rooms is for the guests that are spending the majority of their time outside the room to enjoy our common spaces, our restaurants, and overall the beautiful city of Chicago. It was quite a unique experience developing this concept with a group virtually, but in the end I believe we did quite a great job! It was also interesting seeing how a virtual showcase would work out for the class. The Capstone Showcase ended up being partially on a website called Flipgrid with video promotions for each team as well as a live showcase via zoom. After the showcase and all our hard work, our team ended up receiving the best business plan, best global visuals for our video, and an honorable mention for best presentation!

This quarter was also my last ever quarter for classes in my program and I am one step closer to graduating. I am currently looking for supervisory positions in food and beverage for my internship and am very excited to see what will come of it and where I’ll end up!