The SHTM is this year's recipient of the McCool Breakthrough Award from the International Council on Hotel, Restaurants, and Institutional Education (I-CHRIE), the world's largest organisation of hospitality, and tourism educators. The School's breakthrough has been realised in the form of Hotel ICON, the heart of its innovative approach to hospitality and tourism education.

The McCool Breakthrough Award is given annually to an individual, group, programme, school, college, association or corporation that has made a significant breakthrough or introduced a unique approach in the spirit of I-CHRIE's mission. The award recognises an event, activity, or programme in memory of Willie McCool, a dedicated and successful astronaut and son of Audrey and Barry McCool, faculty members at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

From humble beginnings as a diploma-conferring department, the SHTM has risen to become one of the largest hospitality schools in Asia and amongst the top such schools worldwide. Ranked No. 2 in the world, the SHTM has been playing a key role in leading hospitality and tourism education and research.

With Asia emerging as the global centre of excellence in hospitality and tourism business, the SHTM saw the need to advance both education and research in the field and sought to refine a distinctive vision of hospitality and tourism education. That vision, unlike any other, led to the creation of a new education approach with Hotel ICON at its centre.

Wholly owned by PolyU and an extension of the SHTM, Hotel ICON is the world's first teaching and research hotel of its kind. A purpose-built hotel that fully integrates teaching, learning and research in a full service environment, Hotel ICON is committed to providing interactive and dynamic teaching, learning and research environments as well as state-of-the-art educational facilities.

The McCool Breakthrough Award recognises the School's success in launching Hotel ICON. It will be presented at the 2012 Annual I-CHRIE Summer Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, this August.