Acredius & EHL School of Hospitality — A Strategic Partnership

Acredius is glad to announce a strategic partnership with the EHL Hospitality Business School via its Institute of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the best hotel management school in the world. Acredius and EHL will strive to work toward valuable ideas and provide innovative solutions through their cognitive collaboration.

The collaboration between Acredius and the EHL Hospitality Business School will cover several domains of mutual interest.

In the framework of its Student Business Project, EHL will nominate a group of its students to collaborate with Acredius data scientists in creating a Green Scoring model. It will serve to evaluate how well a company/hotel has integrated environmental corporate social responsibility into its business.

Acredius, along with the coaches of EHL, will provide development discussion among different departments of both establishments, and offer innovative solution-driven recommendations to each participant, enabling them to understand their strengths, potential and skills in the fintech and sustainability areas. The partners will work together to ensure the progress of the program and its adequacy to market and potential clients.

The role of EHL students will combine providing data collection support, researching secondary and external data sets related to hotels management, environmental quality, building performance data, and conducting research about environmental issues and green specifications. This opportunity will allow the participant students to apply their academic and practical knowledge to real-life solutions. It will also help both partners to explore wider horizons of cooperation between business establishments and research institutions.

The green scoring model is only the beginning of Acredius and EHL’s approach toward more sustainable businesses in Switzerland and abroad. The assessment model seeks to position itself ahead of other green certifications and suggests a business approach that encourages companies to consider and address environmental issues in their supply chains and day-to-day operations.

The essential purpose of the green scoring model by Acredius and EHL is to help analyse and examine all relevant information about a company’s services, products, activities and decision-making processes using Artificial Intelligence methodologies to generate a greenness assessment for hotels as a first level, and all sorts of companies at a second level. This assessment will serve as a reference or a starting point for greener business behaviour.

The partnership between Acredius and EHL may be categorised into three specific levels depending on the type of coordination that will be taking place.

Training level: Collaborating with Acredius will reflect the real application of the EHL Student Business Project. The students cooperating with the Acredius team will be introduced to the marketplace lending concept and its applications on hotels and business management.

Business (Investment) level: As part of its embracing of alternative finance, EHL selects Acredius’ marketplace lending platform to launch a crowdlending campaign for a hotel project. The project will respect all ESG requirements in its establishment and operations, and it will aim to cultivate a culture of sustainability in the hospitality field by providing a reference score through the green scoring tool.

Academic level: Collaboration with universities, the relationship between business and academia, and the importance of connecting data scientists with academic researchers are the topics of an academic paper to be elaborated on between Acredius and EHL.

The Centre of Excellence of Acredius will join efforts with EHL professors to create elaborate research on the best ways to apply Artificial Intelligence methodologies to meet sustainability requirements in business. The research will shed light on how greener approaches can improve the quality of our lives, protect our ecosystem and preserve natural resources for future generations. The research will also examine organisations’ holistic approaches, and how ESG is applied in corporate operations, from manufacturing to logistics to customer service.

About EHL

EHL (Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne) is an ambassador for traditional Swiss hospitality. It has created and inspired a unique professional community of over 25,000 hospitality managers, united by the values and the legacy of EHL.

EHL is the world’s first hotel management school. It was established in 1893 and is a leading university that provides learning solutions for students from 114 different countries. With undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs, EHL offers its students a range of on-campus and online education opportunities at various stages of their professional journey.

About Acredius

Acredius Group is a Swiss Fintech group. Having the mission to impact the real economy and be one of the future innovation leaders. Acredius provides an ecosystem supporting entrepreneurs and investors. It also assists them throughout their journey, especially with:

• An online marketplace lending platform that makes investors’ and borrowers’ needs meet in an unconventional, digital, intuitive, and safe environment
• A Private Equity Fundraising offer for promising startups and dynamic companies searching for equity investments.
• A Growth Strategy arm closes the loop of the company’s journey by supporting it pre-, during, and post fundraising, or credit obtention.

The group also features the “Acredius Tunisia Centre of Excellence” ATUCE. It is a new arm focused on Artificial Intelligence and data-driven decision-making. Its purpose is to help international clients stay relevant in a customer-centric and insights-driven future.