Emerald Forest at the Karlshochschule 2018

"Emerald Forest is a great introduction to the complex world of management. Issues of company problems, management failures and mismanagement appear frequently in the media and students often do not realise why or how errors arise, apparently obvious affairs can be overlooked or trivial matters become inflated into major crises. This simulation game is designed to make all those things tangible – and I think it succeeds tremendously. Piece by piece the participants learn how individual business areas are inter-connected and how 'thinking outside the box' is often necessary to deal with a particular issue successfully."

"I think that Emerald Forest Hotel is so realistic that I am not sure whether we can call it a simulation. The student teams have not just to decide but also to perform as actual hotel managers. Simulation is demanding in many ways: planning their activities, handling team work in international teams, managing with tight deadlines, lacking sleep and last but not least, being creative."

"Emerald Forest is an online business simulation platform in which diverse teams compete to set up a hotel. However, it is different from the usual fanfare because of its interactive components: hotel teams have to market their hotel, prepare for a trade show, engage in PR campaigns and deal with crises. Most importantly, they learn that it is not always easy working in teams, meeting tight deadlines and dealing with massive amounts of information and different directives from various sources. What we find is that for this rather intense, 5-day simulation in-situ, students become a part of the hotel they have set up. They embody their hotel and develop a sense of ownership amidst themselves and collectively as a group. Hence the biggest take-away is more than time management and team building skills, but an experience about learning about the self and the world around."