Diekirch, April 2010 N°1/2010

Dear AEHT Members

Just like the Portuguese navigators 550 years ago,let’s set sail and head for a new territory situated onthe banks of the Tagus estuary which the inhabitantsof Lisbon called ‘Sea of Straw’ (

Mar da palha)

’ because of the yellowish reflections caused by the setting sun. Lisbon, Europe’s most westerly capital,will be our host for the 23

AEHT Annual Conference from 5

to 10

October 2010. Lisbon and the surrounding region boast a remarkable heritagedating from Portugal’s 16

century golden age and financed by the wealth brought back from Portuguesecolonies discovered in the 15

century during themany Portuguese voyages of discovery; these wereorganised not only to promote the Catholic faith and to counter Moorish conquests and influence, but alsoto put a stop to the commercial superiority of the Arabs and Venetians.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos – the monument built in Belém in 1960 tocommemorate the 500

anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator,the Portuguese king who instigated the first expeditions. The king’s statue stands at the prow.

Thus in 1460 the Portuguese discovered Guinea, the first of their five African colonies, thereby securing their monopoly of African trade, especially of gold,ivory, slaves and malagueta (an African substitute for pepper).

In 1487 Bartolomeu Dias reached the shoreof present-day Angola, then the most southerly landsof Africa, returning via the Cape of Good Hope. In1497 Vasco de Gama discovered the route to the Indies, thus putting a stop to Venice’s Mediterraneanmonopoly of the spice trade and undermining the Arabs’ commercial interests in this domain. Following Vasco de Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral, Francisco d’Almeida and Afonso d’Albuquerqueestablished settlements to support the spice trade in Zanzibar, Calicut and Malacca. It was by chance that Alvares Cabral, who had set off with his squadron of 13 ships and 1500 men to intimidate the Arabs,discovered Brazil while avoiding the calm waters of the Gulf of Guinea. After the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the Pope was called upon to adjudicate,and in 1493 divided the world between the Spaniardsand the Portuguese in the Papal Bull known as ‘Inter Coetera’ which became the Treaty of Tordesillas in1494. The Portuguese obtained Brazil and Africa,while the Spaniards were awarded the rest of America west of Brazil. Not only was Lisbon’s and Portugal’s wealth guaranteed for the next century,but also our cultures and our culinary habits would be greatly altered as a result.

The Executive Board at the Lisbon Hotel School on March 6

For many of our students the AEHT Annual Conference is an important stage in their careers, giving them the opportunity to show off their vital competences, their skills and their professional knowledge, as well as developing their contacts withthe rest of the world. This event will enable them todiscover a new educational and professional world,an exceptional multinational environment, a new sociocultural context, a new gastronomy and new friendships. However, so that this experience canbecome an unqualified success, and so that no student should be excluded from the competitions, theCompetitions Committee has just drawn up a

set of rules

which must be observed to the letter:

. Every student must have the requiredlanguage level for the chosen contest, asdefined by the Council of Europe’sframework of reference for languages. Theteacher in charge must confirm this levelwhen he or she registers the student. Ifthis rule is not observed, the candidate will

Diekirch, April 2010 N°1/2010

be excluded from the contest.2. No school may register more than onestudent per contest. The online registrationsystem will automatically refuse a secondregistration.3. No student may participate more than once inan Annual Conference. The organisers willcarry out checks to prevent this.4. The online registration system willautomatically limit the number of places percountry available in the competitions to 25% ofthe allocated places, except for themanagement competition where this quota willbe 50%. Similarly, the organising country mayallocate to itself any places which remainunfilled by the registration dead-line, thuspossibly exceeding the quota.5. The accompanying teachers will beobliged to indicate when they registerwhich subject(s) they teach so that theycan be members of the judging panels,thus enabling all teachers to take part in atleast one excursion.

This 23

Annual Conference is being organised bythe Directorate of the department for school coordi-nation and management of the ‘Turismo de Portugal I.P.’ agency together with the Lisbon hotel school.The ‘Turismo de Portugal I.P.’ agency is aligned tothe Ministry for Economy, Innovation and Develop-ment, and is the national/central tourism authorityresponsible for the promotion, improvement and sus-tainable development of tourism activity in Portugal.16 Hotel and Tourism Schools, located throughout Portugal, are answerable to the Agency - and manyof them are involved in organising the Conference.

The Lisbon hotel school has occupied this1927 building since 2009 Head Office of ‘Turismo de Portugal I.P’

The programme has not changed much since the preliminary version was presented to the General Assembly in Dubrovnik. Nine competitions will beoffered:



Culinary Arts competition



Cocktail Bar competition



Competition involving the presentation of atourism destination (for students in initial training) and Tourism Management competition (for Higher Education students)



Flambé competition



Reception competition



Management competition



Pastry competition



Restaurant service competition



Wine service competition. All the competitions will take place at the Marriott Hotel, Avenidas dos Combatentes 45, PT-1600-042 Lisbon, except for the culinary arts and pastry con-tests which will be held at the Lisbon hotel school.Since the ‘carnation revolution’ in 1974, and espe-cially since it joined the European Union in 1986, Lisbon has undergone remarkable development. Long gone are the dark days of the 46-year Salazar dicta-torship, during which time the Portuguese economywas in ruins. We will be hosted by a brand-new citywhich enjoys a standard of living and infrastructureswhich compare well with those of other Eastern European capitals. The facilities to be used during the Conference bear ample witness to this.

Marriott Hotel, Lisbon The New York Conference and Banqueting Hall Auditorium for wine studies Two of the Lisbon Hotel School’smany kitchens

Diekirch, April 2010 N°1/2010

Numerous

excursions

lasting two or three hours will be organised in Lisbon itself, and three others will take us outside the city, as follows:1.

Óbidos,

a fortified town north of Lisbon, and oneof the favourite tourist attractions because of thewell-preserved ramparts which date from theMoorish occupation and which were partiallyrestored in the 12

, 13

and 16

centuries. A keepand the castle’s high towers occupy the northern part of the town, which is at a higher elevation. From the covered way you will enjoy a splendid view over the town and its white painted houses picked out in blue and yellow.2.

Évora

, a fortress city dating from the Portuguese golden age, located around a hundred kilometreseast of Lisbon. It is rich in history, having kept from its eventful past numerous medieval and renaissance palaces - the town is amazing museumof Portuguese architecture. For a long time thetown was the seat of the royal residence, mostlyduring the reigns of the Portuguese monarchs inthe 15

and 16

centuries, especially that of John II (nicknamed ‘the Perfect Prince’, meaning ‘thetyrant’ with reference to the work of the FlorentineMachiavelli, because he brought the power of thenobility into his own hands and defended theordinary citizens against the nobility’sextortionate behaviour). Other monarchs to residein Évora were Manuel 1

(the Great or theWealthy) who continued to support Portuguesevoyages of discovery and commercial monopolies,as well as John 3

(the Pious). The town’s prestige reached its apogee in the 16

centurywhen it was elevated to the rank of Ecclesiastical Metropolis. The town’s historic centre was givenUNESCO World Heritage classification in 1986.

Fátima

, one of the main sanctuaries of the cult of the Virgin Mary. This little Portuguese town is part of the city of Ourém in the Santarém district,and became famous in 1917 when three young shepherds claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary,alone or in the presence of thousands of faithful,on six occasions on the 13

of each month fromMay to October 1917, except on August 19

whenthe three local children had been put in prison bythe local administrator. Two of the children died very young and were beatified by Pope John Paul 2

in 1989. Lucie Dos Santos took her vows and from 1946 resided in the Carmelite convent inCoimbra where she died in 2005 aged 97, leaving us her version of the Apparitions of the Virgin.

Some practical information about the 2010Conference will soon be available on the organisers’ website at

www.aehtlisboa2010.eu

(also accessiblevia a link fromwww.aeht.eu ).

The River Tagus (Tejo) is over 1000 kmslong and rises near to Madrid. View fromthe Castelo de São JorgeThe ‘Eléctrico’, thehundred-year-old tramwhich trundles along thenarrow streets of Old Lisbon

Delegates will register online in the same way as in2010. However, the registration software has beenimproved to take account of the rules set out in theboxed text at the beginning of this newsletter. The

electronic registration form

and the competitiondocuments are in the process of being finalised, and will shortly be available from download on the samewebsite. In order to register, you will first of all have to create your own account by choosing your own user-nameand password. After registering, you will receive an e-mail giving you the link which will enable you toactivate your account and to access the registration form. A demonstration of the registration process isavailable on the website. The AEHT code, whichidentifies the registering school, is the unique link between the registration software and the AEHT’sdatabase. For security reasons (and to avoid duplicateregistrations) the programme will accept only onecontact person (only one account) per school. It isvital that when schools complete the pre-registration process, they register students – even fictitious ones – for the competitions, in order to guarantee their places. Changes can be made subsequently online.Once you have registered you can download theinvoice proforma which appears in the margin of the same web page. After payment, the paper version of the invoice will be sent to you by post or will behanded to you at the Conference.The organisers will lay on free

transfers

between theMarriott hotel, where all the participants will be staying, and Lisbon airport and rail station, where students and teachers from the Lisbon hotel school or from partner schools will greet you with plaquesbearing the AEHT insignia. For the return journey thetransfer dates and times will be posted in the foyer of the Marriott hotel.The initially announced rates of the conference fees -€580 per student (sharing a double or three-bedded room) and €720 per teacher – all increasing by 20%