HTL International School: 20 Years of History

This October, HTL International School is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The HTL school history is rich and exciting. We have experienced highs and lows, meeting students from more than 75 countries worldwide. As an educational center, we have survived political uncertainty, economic crises, and even a world pandemic.

HTL International school was the first one in Spain to introduce virtual classes. We did this years before everyone else discovered this option. Our team always wanted to be the most efficient and innovative, not only to do good business but to provide our students with the necessary skills and knowledge.

HTL  made a lot of memories along the way. And we know that you must have some questions for us. That is why in this article, we want to share with you our story and also answer some of the most asked questions.

Is HTL International a Language school?

No, we are not. But we once were. The story of HTL International school starts in 2005, when the first educational center was opened in Lloret de Mar. Back in the day, it was the Spanish Language school, giving the possibility for students from all around the world to travel to Spain, enjoy their time in a beautiful place on the Mediterranean coast, and learn Spanish at different levels.

From that moment, Languages are an important part of our education. Not only because it is something we know well, but also because we understand how important it is in the modern world to speak more than one language to guarantee your career success.

HTL International continued developing the Language classes over the years; for example, the school became the official DELE exam center in 2012. But at that point, the languages were not the only thing that we suggested for international students. By 2010, it was obvious that Languages are not enough.

The Opportunity Presents Itself

Being in the booming tourist destination, we quickly saw the possibility to establish a collaboration with hotels and Resorts and help them to get more interns. HTL school started the Hotel Internship programs (still available till this day) and from 2010 to 2012 we helped a lot of students not only to enjoy their summer but to start their career in the Hospitality Industry. This also gave us the chance to communicate with a lot of HR Managers and Hotel owners and to discover more problems in the industry that we were happy to help solve

Why Hospitality and Tourism?

In the early 2010s, this was what the industry needed. Students who graduated from universities had great theoretical knowledge, but lacked the practical understanding of the situation. Knowing exactly what skills Hotels were looking for, HTL International School introduced its first Hotel Management Program in 2012. We knew exactly what HR managers were looking for: young professionals who knew how to manage complex tasks and spoke several languages. That was the reason why the French and Russian languages were introduced during the Language trimester.

New times, new problems, new solutions

As time went by, HTL school always wanted to stay at the top, being able to introduce the best possibilities to international students. By doing constant research, we discovered a lot of things that could be improved. Such as:

• opening a second campus in Barcelona city, to enlarge the internship possibilities (2013)
• introducing the virtual classroom studies, even though the internet connection was not the best at that time (2013)
• adding Business degrees to our academic offer, since tourism is a very exciting but not very stable career offer (2014)
• being accredited as a SIELE examination center, right after this language exam was introduced (2016)
• opening more campuses in Spain: Valencia in April of 2018 and Madrid in October of 2019.

We had a lot of global plans for the future, but, as you all know, in several months, the world collapsed.

Pandemic changes everything

March of 2020 was the moment when the worst-case scenario played out for everyone. Closed borders, no international travel, empty streets, people afraid of being too close to each other. Many educational centers were pushed to close at all or to switch to online and virtual studies, which they hardly knew how to do.

We, on the other hand, had a solution. Using virtual classroom studies for the last 7 years, we were able to continue our studies almost without change. Yes, the groups were smaller, and many students needed help adjusting to the new reality, but our teachers were experts and knew exactly what to do.

During this time, the Hotel and Tourism programs became almost obsolete, and new, “online” professions started to gain popularity. Our Master in Digital Marketing had the record number of students in 2021. This made us pay more attention to digital subjects, introducing a Diploma program in Social Media, modifying the Public Relations Diploma study plan to “digitalize” it, and introducing new exciting Master degrees: In AI Management and Storytelling for Influencers.

Over the years, people became more comfortable with online and virtual education, and even when at the end of 2021, we were able to meet people in face-to-face modality, the majority still preferred to stay at home and study virtually. This was the moment when our hybrid modality started slowly becoming a virtual modality.

Post-Pandemic Modern Reality

We can say that the world is coming back, but at the same time, it will never be as it used to be in 2019. There are some changes that we saw and reacted to in the past years:

• Tourism is coming back, but people are not satisfied with classical tourism. They need something more original and exciting. This brought a lot of popularity to Sport Tourism Management, Medical Tourism Management, and Luxury Tourism.
• Students are much more comfortable with virtual studies from anywhere, which gives us the benefit of not depending on student visas. We can finally teach students from all around the world, completely ignoring the bureaucratic problems.
• Mental Health is becoming a very important part of our lives. So not only are the future consultants interested in our Master degree in Mental Health, but also the HR Managers and Business owners are paying attention to it. To be able to provide better care for their employees.
• Artificial Intelligence is a part of our lives. It is not enough to have a separate Master’s degree (like it was in 2022), but this subject is now part of all of our programs.

The world is changing, and HTL International is changing with it.

What’s next?

At HTL International school, we have always had a goal of providing the best skills and knowledge to our students. We are constantly tracking the changes in the Business and Tourism world, staying in contact with professionals to be able to make necessary changes to our academic programs.

Over the last year, we have seen a new trend of the world becoming more efficient. Young people are not ready anymore to spend 12 months of their lives in classrooms. Modern education needs to be flexible, short, and intensive.

With this in mind, we are getting ready for some exciting changes coming from January 2026. We will tell you all about it quite soon, both in this blog and on our social media. Stay tuned not to miss it!