Spears Business HTM students excel at ICHRIE competitions testing hotel management skills
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Media Contact: Stephen Howard | Director of Marketing & Communications | 405-744-4363 | stephen.howard@okstate.edu
Students in Oklahoma State University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management have continued earning honors while putting their hotel management skills into practice.
Undergraduate students Mel Gelnar and Carrie Bailey placed first and second, respectively, in the Fall 2025 International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (ICHRIE) Hotel Challenge by Knowledge Matters. Bailey also achieved a runner-up finish in LEVEL UP, an ICHRIE and Russell Partnership Technology Revenue Management Competition. Both competitions required participants to manage virtual hotel simulations.
HTM students climbed the ICHRIE Hotel Challenge leaderboard to win $800 of the $1,000 in prizes. Ali Alwakyly, Grant Stupic, Zoe Zachary, Kate Rock and Lucia Peyre joined Gelnar and Bailey for a total of seven OSU participants in the top 10.
“Through these competitions, I discovered a strong passion for learning more about revenue management and hotel operations,” Bailey said. “Earning a top-three ranking on both leaderboards was especially rewarding, and seeing that a majority of the top competitors in the ICHRIE Hotel Challenge were students from the OSU HTM program made me incredibly proud. It reinforced my confidence in the quality of education I am receiving and highlighted the strong market value of this degree program and its faculty.”
From Nov. 24-Dec. 5, the online ICHRIE Hotel Challenge tested students on front desk operations, housekeeping, marketing/public relations, group sales, banquets, pricing/revenue management, social media and restaurant operations. ICHRIE and Knowledge Matters collaborated with the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation and Marriott International to create the hotel simulation.
"Participating in the ICHRIE Hotel Challenge represented the exacting nature of managing a hotel and the importance of being flexible,” Gelnar said. “It's difficult to direct such a variety of tasks, and I made mistakes, but I learned how to recover and avoid making the same mistake in the future. Our professors work hard to prepare us for the industry and provide us opportunities to get ahead, and I feel proud to be a part of the program to display the exceptional education I'm receiving from OSU."
In the LEVEL UP competition, students acted as revenue managers in a virtual environment featuring a 500-room simulated hotel. Objectives included maximizing profit and reaching the highest occupancy. Bailey, who finished as the top student from the United States, said the global competition taught her to prioritize not only numbers, but also the strategies needed for exceptional guest and employee satisfaction.
Although OSU’s HTM program only started entering competitions over the past couple of years, rapid success followed. HTM students have finished in the top three of back-to-back ICHRIE Hotel Challenges and LEVEL UP competitions.
Abraham Terrah and Sienna Lawson placed second and third, respectively, in the Spring 2025 LEVEL UP competition, while Taylor Parker claimed second place in the Spring 2025 ICHRIE Hotel Challenge.
“We teach hotel management in a very hands-on and practical way using simulation software, and our students have really embraced this,” said Steven West, an assistant professor of professional practice in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. “They are also quite competitive and learn from their in-class exercises that every action is going to have a reaction of some sort, both financially and operationally. We work on this aspect to ensure the students anticipate these reactions and can learn the most business expedient responses, and their acumen in this area shows in their results.”
Founded in 1937, the OSU School of Hospitality and Tourism Management in the Spears School of Business has evolved into a business-focused academic program that educates students and conducts research for the food and beverage, lodging, event planning and tourism management industries. OSU ranks 11th nationally and 27th globally among hospitality and tourism management programs, according to ShanghaiRanking.com.
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