Chef Robin Villarreal – a keynote speaker at CTTH 2019
The Culinary Arts Institute Ambassador and Head of Strategic Culinary Projects Chef Robin Villareal is representing Varna University of Management today at the international conference “Contemporary Trends in Tourism and Hospitality” – CTTH 2019, which is held in the city of Novi Sad from 11th to 14th September 2019. He is one of the keynote speakers and presents on the topic “Be a realist, always verify”.
It is the 18th edition of CTTH International conference dedicated to research in tourism, leisure, hotel management, gastronomy and multidisciplinary studies such as events management and meeting industry, entrepreneurship in hospitality, creative industries, etc. The main aim of the conference is to put emphasis on the importance of cultural and event tourism as important factors for improvement of tourism industry and general economic image of certain country or region.
This year’s conference working title is “Get Ready for the iGeneration”, as statistics show that by 2020 the iGeneration will account for approximately 40% of all consumers with disposable income to travel.
Targeting younger generations, however might sometimes be a challenge. The iGeneration has the chance to be connected during their entire lives, to have access to almost unlimited amount of information. But is all this information reliable and how it should be filtered? These are the questions that Chef Robin is focusing on in his presentation.
Being an educator and a chef instructor, he sees the advantages and also the disadvantages of the social media, internet and various types of communication vehicles by which information about food and nutrition is disseminated. All these sources include information that can lead to success, but it can also lead to failure. Advantageously, they can be a spring of ideas, inspiration and creativity, but they must be assessed with care and prudency. Because not all of these sources are credible or tested, and hence not 100% dependable, nor verifiable. Therefore, one must know how to process, verify and interpret the information obtained from them in order to distinguish what is credible information and what is not.
“Future chefs, don’t be in a hurry to grow. Live through the process, learn from mistakes and remember your basics.” – that is one of the basic advices of Chef Robin to all his students and audience.