Best hospitality schools in the world: the 2026 ranking

Which are the best hospitality schools in the world?

By the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 for Hospitality and Leisure Management, the best hospitality school in the world is EHL Hospitality Business School in Lausanne. EHL's own rankings page states it has held first place every year from 2019 to 2026 (EHL, about EHL: awards and rankings). QS publishes this subject ranking once a year.

QS's own introduction to the 2026 table states that over 170 universities are included and that all of the top five are based in Switzerland (QS, page archived on 11 September 2026).

The ranked schools themselves confirm six places in the 2026 top ten, all Swiss: EHL first, Les Roches second, Glion third, Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) in the top four, César Ritz Colleges fifth and HIM Business School eighth. The remaining places in the top ten are not listed here because no primary source for them was available.

Three of these schools are featured in depth on this site: César Ritz Colleges, the Culinary Arts Academy and HIM Business School, each linked below. EHL, Les Roches, Glion and SHMS are not; they are named here factually, with their own sources, because they rank ahead of or alongside the schools we cover.

The Swiss schools in the QS 2026 top ten

The table gives each school's place as the school itself states it for the 2026 edition, checked on 24 September 2026. César Ritz Colleges is the highest-placed of the three houses this site covers in depth.

Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland's own homepage says it is the only culinary arts school in the QS listing and that it places among the top in the 2026 edition, without giving an exact number; a separate page on the same site states eighth place, but for the 2025 edition. This guide therefore gives no 2026 place for the Culinary Arts Academy, which appears in the fees and internships sections below.

Why so many of the ranked schools are Swiss

All six places confirmed for the 2026 edition belong to Swiss schools. Part of the answer is age: hotel schools have operated around Lake Geneva and in the Valais for more than a century, long enough to build the academic and employer reputation that a survey-based ranking rewards.

• EHL Hospitality Business School, Lausanne: founded in 1893 as the École hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL, about EHL).
• Glion Institute of Higher Education, Glion and Bulle: founded in 1962 (Glion's own homepage).
• César Ritz Colleges, Brig: founded in 1982 (César Ritz Colleges, about).
• Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, Crans-Montana: its own site says a Les Roches degree has carried its name for more than 70 years, without stating an exact founding year (Les Roches, about).

All four are in the west of Switzerland, in the cantons of Vaud, Fribourg and Valais. That concentration predates the ranking; a survey that asks academics and employers which schools they rate highly is likely to favour schools with a long record.

What the QS ranking measures, and its limits

QS's subject rankings include reputation surveys of academics and employers, and QS publishes separate scores for these indicators alongside the overall rank. César Ritz Colleges' own rankings page, for example, reports a QS Academic Reputation score of 93.7 out of 100 (third globally) and a QS Employer Reputation score of 93.3 out of 100 (fifth globally), both for 2025.

A reputation survey asks people which schools they already know. That tends to favour long-established, larger institutions over newer or smaller ones, and it says nothing about a school's accreditation, its total fees, how many internship months it offers, or whether it suits one particular student. The checklist near the end of this guide covers what a rank leaves out.

It is also worth noticing what kind of institution tops this particular subject list. The schools we verified in first, second, third and fifth place are small, single-subject hotel schools, not large general universities with a hospitality department. A subject-level survey asks academics and employers specifically about hospitality and leisure management, so a specialist school can outscore a bigger university here even where that university outranks it overall.

A different ranking, a different method: ShanghaiRanking

QS is not the only subject ranking that covers hospitality. ShanghaiRanking publishes a Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) for Hospitality and Tourism Management, built on nine measures of research that ShanghaiRanking groups into five categories: faculty strength, research output, research quality, research impact and international collaboration (ShanghaiRanking, Global Ranking of Academic Subjects). None of these categories is a reputation survey.

In its 2024 edition, ShanghaiRanking placed the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, an institution not on this site, first in the world for the eighth year running since the subject entered the ranking in 2017 (PolyU SHTM's own report on its 2024 result). That school does not lead the QS list. The difference is the method, not a contradiction: QS asks academics and employers who the leading schools are, ShanghaiRanking counts research papers and awards. Neither figure is more correct than the other; they measure different things.

Which of these Swiss schools are accredited under Swiss law

Under Article 62 of the Higher Education Act (HEdA, SR 414.20), the designations university, university of applied sciences and university of teacher education, and names derived from them, may be used in any language only by institutions accredited under the Act; Article 21 makes the Swiss Accreditation Council the body that decides on accreditation. SERI, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation confirms this directly: "the legally protected designations are as follows: university, university of applied sciences, university of teacher education, as well as compound or derived designations," and names the Swiss Accreditation Council as "the competent authority for deciding on accreditations."

Of the six ranked schools we verified, the swissuniversities list names Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, Glion Institute of Higher Education and César Ritz Colleges Switzerland as university of applied sciences institutes, and EHL as a school conventioned to the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO). Swiss Hotel Management School and HIM Business School do not appear on the list, and neither does Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland.

Accreditation status decides who can award which degree. César Ritz Colleges awards its own bachelor's and master's degrees. The Culinary Arts Academy awards its bachelor jointly, under its own name and as a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Derby in the United Kingdom. HIM Business School awards its BBA through Northwood University in the United States and, from October 2026, a Swiss Federal Diploma in Business Administration of its own that it describes as pending recognition. For the wider rules on permits and recognition, see our guide to studying in Switzerland as an international student.

A QS rank and Swiss accreditation are two separate questions, and a school can have a strong rank without Swiss accreditation, or the reverse. SHMS places in the top four above and is not on the swissuniversities list; HIM Business School places eighth and is also not on it. Check a school's own accreditation page directly rather than assuming its rank settles the question.

Fees at a glance

A full hospitality bachelor at the schools in this guide costs from CHF 129,400 to more than CHF 230,000 in total, most of it including a room and meals. The published totals do not run in the same order as the QS rank: the least expensive school here places eighth, not first.

Internships and the 2027 intakes

Every hospitality bachelor in this guide includes two or three paid internships. At César Ritz Colleges, the Culinary Arts Academy, HIM Business School, SHMS, Les Roches and Glion, the schools' own fee schedules show no tuition during the internship periods; EHL is the exception, since its fee document charges tuition across all four years, including the internship semesters, and lists support for internships among what that tuition covers. Intake months differ by school and by programme, so check the school's own admissions page before planning around a date here.

• César Ritz Colleges, Brig: two internships in its BSc in Hospitality Business Management, with intakes in January, July and October 2027; its new BSc in Applied AI for Hospitality Business Management starts only in October 2027.
• Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, Le Bouveret and Brig: two six-month internships in its Bachelor of Arts, with an October 2026 intake still open, then January, April, July and October 2027.
• HIM Business School, Montreux: three internships in its BBA, about 1.5 years of the course in placements, with intakes in January, April and October 2027.
• EHL Hospitality Business School, Lausanne: two six-month internships, with its next intakes in September 2027 and February 2028.
• Les Roches, Crans-Montana, and Glion Institute of Higher Education, Glion and Bulle: two and three internship semesters respectively; their published fee schedules covered spring or autumn 2026 starts at Les Roches and spring or autumn 2027 starts at Glion when last checked.
• Swiss Hotel Management School, Caux and Leysin: two paid internships within its four-semester BA and ES Diploma on the 2026/27 schedule.

Internship pay for placements in Switzerland follows a sector-wide minimum, not a school's own choice; see Swiss hotel management school fees for 2026 and 2027 intakes for the current figure and its legal basis.

How to choose a hospitality school beyond the rank

A QS or ShanghaiRanking place tells you what academics, employers or fellow researchers think of a school in general. It does not tell you what a specific programme costs in total, who awards the degree, or whether the internships suit your child. Check these points against the school's own current page before deciding.

• Is the school on the swissuniversities list, or does it award degrees through a partner university abroad?
• What is the total programme cost, including room, meals, insurance and deposits, not tuition alone?
• How many months of paid internship are built into the programme, and does the school charge fees during them?
• What language is the programme taught in, and does the school ask for an English test score?
• Does the programme stay on one campus, or move between towns or countries during the degree?
• Which intake month is still open for the year you need, and how far ahead does the school ask you to apply?
• Where does the school itself say its graduates work? Read its own placement or careers page rather than a third-party summary.

We are an independent search and selection service. We put current published rankings and figures in front of a family and suggest a shortlist of houses with the reason for each; the institutions pay us when a placement is made, not the family. For programmes and campuses school by school, see our private universities overview, or write to us with your child's plans.