Smith Travel Research (STR), an international consulting company with the largest hotel database, the STR SHARE Center, maintains contact with professionals in the industry and in higher education institutions. For several years, they have been organising online competitions for university students, where the focus is on database analysis. Although it was a close competition between the first three ranked teams, this year's STR Central and Eastern European competition was once again won by the BBS FCHT team and besides the prize offered by La Fondation pour la Formation Hôtelière they won the right to participate in the world competition without registration. The runner-up team of the competition came from Corvinus University of Budapest, the third-placed team came from the University of Primorska (Slovenia), and the fourth-placed team came from Singidunum University (Serbia).
After an almost three-month-long preparation, seven teams competed against each other. Teams from the University of Rijeka, Vilnius University of Applied Sciences VIKO, Corvinus University of Budapest and BBS FCHT participated in the competition in person while the Prague University of Economics and Business, Singidunum University and the University of Primorska joined online. The participants were greeted on the spot by Dr. Kornélia Kiss, head of the Department of Tourism, and the competition was opened online by Duane Vinson, vice president of the STR Share Center. The 30-minute presentations of the analyses were evaluated by a four-member panel of experts: Árpád Szó (HR manager of Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest), Tomislav Ceh (director of PKF Hospitality Group), René Angoujard (senior hotel manager), and from the academy, visiting professor Dr. Béla Muhi (Educons University).
Members of the FCHT team: Annisa Husnul Latifah, Jessica Guzman Zapata, Mỹ Linh and Linh Nguyen, students of tourism management.
Supervisors: Dr. Klára Karakasné Morvay (Department of Hospitality) and Dr. Éva Szabóné Erdélyi (Department of Methodology for Business Analysis).
For the first time this year, the competition was held in a semi-attendance format. With the support of STR Share Center, the organiser was the winning institution of last year's competition, BBS FCHT.