Bayswater 2025 - What's New

Daniel Saldarriaga (00:01)
Good morning, good morning, good morning to everyone. My name is Daniel Salarriaga. Today, I'm very happy that we are starting our first conversations. We are going to talk about different topics of Bayswater our news, our programs, what is new in Bayswater and educational trends and trends in our sector. For this first occasion, we have the great pleasure, or I have great pleasure of sharing this space with

Stefan Rosens, who is the CEO and of Bayswater Today we are to about all the trends or the novelties that Bayswater for 2025 and the great opportunities in the professional We are to talk in English, since Stefan, despite his years of teaching in Ecuador, does speak Spanish well, so we are going to it for better understanding.

in English. So, Stefan, good morning and how are you? How's everything?

Stephan Roussounis (01:05)
Hi there. Yeah, I understand Spanish, but my speaking is getting worse and worse after after 20 years of or more 24 years of not living in in a Spanish speaking country.

Daniel Saldarriaga (01:17)
And I remember your last time in Colombia, you recall everything we spoke in Spanish, but you just, you were just missing that, that the speaking part. Well, but yes, that's good. So, Stefan, thank you for joining us today. And the idea is that we talk a little bit about our new proposals that Bayswater have. we see, could you please introduce yourself and a little bit of Bayswater to contextualize everyone?

Stephan Roussounis (01:23)
you

Sure, yeah. I founded Bayswater Education with my co -founder James Herbison in 2017. And our goal was to kind of rethink everything that we know so far about the language travel industry. And James and myself have been involved as teachers, agents, accommodation suppliers for more than 20 years. So we know the market well. We also could see...

the language travel sector was kind of maybe peaking and that people are getting a better level of English. And what we're not seeing is infinite amazing growth in language travel students year on year.

So we felt that whilst this sector is amazing and it gives people amazing opportunities to have an experience abroad, that maybe just having a language course provision wasn't enough. And Bayswater was founded with kind of two key concepts. One was to have a much broader portfolio of programs for the traditional language travel sector. And then the other one was to really focus on the key soft skills that you would gain while having a study abroad experience. And seven years later nearly, I think at the end of this year, it will be seven years we've been running Bayswater and we now have

10 schools in five countries and yeah we are very proud of the portfolio and the team that we've put together.

Daniel Saldarriaga (03:12)
That's amazing. That's a fast grow. I live in myself. It's like becoming, I would say like a family business to now a middle sized company and growing and growing and with the languages, English, French, guys and Bayswater, we offer

all the professionals in digital marketing, project management, international business, luxury brand management. But what was the reason behind it? Because we see that normally all those programs were just in the big cities, in London, Toronto, Vancouver. But we know that you're going to expand this to new cities in the UK. So what was the reason behind offering this in more schools?

Stephan Roussounis (03:56)
Yeah, I mean what we've seen this year is a great increase in number of students studying professional certificates. We launched an international business certificate in January and it's been actually our best -selling certificate so far. We've had over 150 students in London study our certificate programs and what we can see now is there's an appetite to do this in other cities.

We recognize that studying in London or Vancouver or Toronto, the accommodation could be very expensive and also not everyone wants the big city experience. So we've decided to broaden out our offering by offering our certificate programs, our micro credentials in three other UK cities. So they'll be in Liverpool all year round and in Brighton and Bournemouth over the summer months.

Daniel Saldarriaga (04:44)
Wow, that's going to be great. I'm pretty sure people, students, agents are going to love these. Liverpool, I understand that it's one of their most popular campuses in the UK, for example. So being in a different city, a small city with lower living expenses, that's going to be probably a very good, it's going to be very attractive for the different actors or people who wants to study. But I also heard that

I know that you're going to expand your programs or you're going to promote new programs. What are going to be those programs that you you're going to be offering?

Stephan Roussounis (05:24)
So when we were considering what kind of portfolio of professional certificates we wanted to offer at Bayes Water, we looked at what we thought would, not what we thought, we looked at the research and we looked particularly at one report that's done every year by LinkedIn and Microsoft, looking at the best careers of the next 10 years in terms of the way that the world is changing and the future of work. And digital marketing was on there, project management was on there.

International business is always going to be a big seller, so we have those programs. But the new program for next year that we're launching is customer experience management. Customer experience is, and customer service is one of the key kind of careers for the future. The reason for that is, I suppose, many careers, technical careers.

are going to be overtaken by things like AI, whereas it's your people skills and the ability to have customer service in real life that is actually going to be more valuable as we go forward.

Daniel Saldarriaga (06:25)
Wow, no, it's like I'm seeing this like connection about base water programs. I would like to go a little bit deeper on that because base water way to teach or base water values is not just about teaching.

English or teaching a digital marketing program that they can actually study back home. What makes Big Water different than that? Why to travel or for a Colombian person cross the ocean, getting to a 10 -hour plane to study digital marketing in London or customer experience in London or in Bournemouth or Liverpool?

Stephan Roussounis (06:43)
you

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think most students or parents who fund students to have this experience understand the value of studying abroad. They expect that by living abroad, you would get certain soft skills. You will overcome homesickness. You will make friends from around the world. You will gain confidence to use your language or the skills that you're learning.

And they're all kind of taken as a given. You're like, you're going to get those. Of course you're going to get those. But what we see many institutions and many students celebrating when they finish their courses, they got to be one level of English or they got to see one level of English, which they could have done at home and online as well. What we've really focused on as a business, and we're to make it even more clear next year, is that we teach students how to talk about the skills that they've gained because we think the skills they've gained on a study abroad experience are going to be

actually what employers at interviews are looking for. So we tell the students while they're studying, you're learning presentation skills, you're learning project work. When you go for an interview, you should talk about these things. And when they graduate, we're going to give them a brand new certificate, which shows these soft skills that they've learned. So what we think the Beyswater difference is, is to educate students how to talk about the soft skills that they have.

more confident.

Daniel Saldarriaga (08:32)
So this is amazing because what you're telling is a person wants to study English in Cape Town, for example, or wants to study digital marketing in Liverpool, that person is going to learn the subject with professionals, with all the expertise of the base water teachers and years or years of experience, but...

In addition to that, they're going to get a certificate of soft skills on communication, on project management. But what is that any supporting body supporting those soft skills or is going to be someone in Bayswater saying, you're good at communication.

Stephan Roussounis (08:57)
Yes.

Yeah, I do.

So there's a organization in UK called CPD Institute. And what we've done is we've shown the core soft skills that are gained over a student study period at Bayswater if you study for at least a month. So you have to study for at least four weeks and every graduate will get a second certificate called the Global Skills Certificate. And this is approved by the CPD Institute. And CPD Institute stands for Career Professional Development. And they're accrediting lots of large organizations

in terms of verifying the skills that being taught within their businesses. on this list of... Sorry, go on,

Daniel Saldarriaga (09:44)
Wow, this is amazing.

No, no, that's all right. It's like, like this is amazing. So people, it's getting that, it's getting that big accreditation. It's getting a third party accrediting their abilities, not only the accreditations of languages, Canada, English, UK, and all the Alain Francis or Digital Marketing Institute that they get with the different programs at wastewater, but have professionals. And the other part, it's for the students, for example, like me as a professional.

Stephan Roussounis (10:01)
Hmm.

Daniel Saldarriaga (10:15)
If I can go to my LinkedIn, can I put that in my LinkedIn and attach it? Because that's going to showcase and that's our new CB. That's old fashioned CBs like past the page. Nowadays it's everything LinkedIn.

Stephan Roussounis (10:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we do have students who took their paper certificate and lost them and then can't prove that they've studied their courses and that happens more often than people think. So our shift next year is all our qualifications will be digital and online. There's no more paper certificates. We will give every student a log on to a platform where they can see their certificate. They'll be provided with a high definition PDF so they can print them out at home if they want to.

But the most important thing is our credentials when people have studied with us will be available on a digital certificate that is verifiable by an employer. And that is shareable on platforms like LinkedIn. So if a student says I did this course and employer can go to our website and check whether the student has done that on their profile, you'll be able to see the skills they gained. So there's more detail about what they've been studying.

and every student can share everything that they did at Bayswater on to their LinkedIn profile. So we would imagine a student would share their core course. I got a B1 in English or I got a digital marketing microcredential and they would also show their global skills certificate that would demonstrate the soft skills that they've gained.

Daniel Saldarriaga (11:44)
Well, is very, like, I really like this part because actually when you look at nowadays recruiters and students, students are looking in trends international, you can see reports where students are looking for shorter and shorter courses. They don't want to study anymore the long four or five years bachelor degree, but they want to keep improving their skills and going to.

to different short programs or improving certain skills, but also they're looking a lot to soften skills that many people, many students lost, especially new generations after pandemic. Many of them are afraid of speaking. Like they're great at studying, they're great online, but when it comes to speak or creating personal relationships, when it's creating or becoming a world citizen, it becomes tougher and tougher for them. So...

Bayswater has actually given them a tool to learn and experience, but also the tools to certify so recruiters can see that they have had this experience. That makes a big difference.

Stephan Roussounis (12:48)
Yeah, think it's two things. think parents are trying and students trying to get themselves ahead of their peers, the people that they've, you know, if they've all graduated from a business degree at Medellin on the same day, how do I get myself ahead? Okay. And one of the parents will believe that a study abroad experience will give them an advantage.

But that advantage in the past has not been explained. The advantage is the soft skills, is the confidence, is the global citizens. And for now, from next year, all of our courses, we're going to ensure that we're covering AI tools in every single one of our courses. So these core skills are going to be highlighted as something you've gained, not just the fact that you speak English to a certain level or you have a digital marketing certification. So I think that's really important. So that's parents. From a company point of view, I think what

what we've seen in all the research that we've done is that employers are finding that students may have the right degree or the right kind of level of English, but when it comes to an interview, they're not being able to present themselves in the right way and talk about themselves in the right way. And when it comes to actually starting work in the workplace, one of the challenges that they find, the biggest challenges are these soft skills, the ability to work in a meeting, to not get stressed by the environment that they're working in.

And seeing that a student is confident to talk about themselves, not just about the courses that they are, and they understand themselves a little bit, that self -reflection and understanding of who they are as a person is actually a really key skill that employers are looking for.

Daniel Saldarriaga (14:24)
So something I'm seeing here is that Pacewater is making a big effort for next year for aligning the programs for all the professionals and corporate and real world needs in terms of software skills, terms of languages, in terms of professional programs, in terms of developing themselves. And I see that you guys have programs or have developed also programs like the...

taking advantage or using the YMS scheme as an example that connects those programs to actual work. YMS is Young Mobility Schemes for those who don't know that's a working visa in the UK that certain countries have. The only one in Latin, by the way, it's Uruguay, but I've heard that you've been working a lot with Koreans or Japanese on these. How that works? How that YMS program works?

Stephan Roussounis (15:21)
We think that increasingly it's going to be hard for people to go and study a vocational course and work part -time as they have been doing in Canada and Australia. And actually the route to kind of going abroad for longer periods of study are going to be through schemes like working holiday visas in Canada and the youth mobility scheme in the UK. So we have

Daniel Saldarriaga (15:23)
you

Stephan Roussounis (15:44)
introduced a work placement program called the Luxury Hotel Internship Scheme, where we're placing people into top hotels in London like the Dorchester or Sofitel, part of the Accor Group or Raffles. So they come over, they do a course, they get placed into a job and then while they're working, we also offer them employability skills and we keep in touch with them to make sure that things are going okay.

And so this program we think is absolutely the kind of area that Bayswater should be in. We'd be delighted to get students from Uruguay on a youth mobility scheme over to the UK on a similar program, but we understand that the government is looking at expanding these youth mobility schemes to other countries. So I think Bayswater being the logical choice for those that thinking about how to improve their career skills.

with a really broad portfolio of programs from language to professional certificates and micro credentials. And in Canada soon our career college as well. I think you can see that we've got this great portfolio of courses, but the key thing is that we're always thinking about employability skills and how we can help you gain those skills to navigate the future of work.

Daniel Saldarriaga (17:01)
very posh to be in an Acre hotel like a standard. Tell my parents, okay, or my mother, I'm going to study in the UK in London. I'm going to make an English course or a customer experience course, but then I ended up working in the marketing of Acre, which is worldwide, basically. It's not alone. It's quite a cool work experience in one of the best hotels worldwide or what hotels change. So...

Stephan Roussounis (17:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Saldarriaga (17:30)
that's congratulations for that part because it's making a big difference. So there's one thing that I have a snitch who told me that you're preparing a bunch of scouts or like a big group of scouts going all around your old your 10 schools worldwide looking for batches everywhere. How's that? Like just clarify me a little bit because it's like you're creating a new group of scouts based water scouts. How that works?

Stephan Roussounis (17:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, when we talk about scouts is what you did when you were kid and you got a badge to prove that you learn how to sew or you learn how to, you know, whatever it is, light a fire. We've talked about what qualifications you can get when you do your course and what you get within your course. But there's also loads of great things that happen outside the classroom. And we wanted a way of recognizing that. And digital badges have become a lot more popular in recent years as a demonstration of

short learnings that you can make or experiences that you have that you can prove. And so on the same digital certification platform that we have for our main courses and our digital certificates, we're going to be able to award badges to recognize things that students did outside of the class in our amazing activity program. So not only do we have great tours to the cultural sites of London and parties and conversation clubs.

We have volunteering opportunities, the opportunity to go and visit a UK company. We have employability skills training, improving your LinkedIn profile, interview skills, presentation skills, all of these things. We have external guests coming to talk about their lives, be that in a foundation or a charity they work for or in a company. These things are going on all the time in every school. If you do have volunteering opportunity, that's absolutely fantastic.

If you've given back to the community, that's amazing. But up to this point, we've had no way of a student proving it. So we're now going to issue a digital badge to say, I did volunteering in the UK. And I think that is really exciting for us because basically you'll be able to log and promote every single great skill and experience that you had when you came to Lydia Bayswater.

Daniel Saldarriaga (19:51)
So actually you're doing a little bit more like what you talked before and it's like how you're going to like stand out from the general person because more and more people like in the past going for a Latin American student going to study for three months for six months, overseas to study English was something just a few people. Now it's becoming more and more popular. More people has that has had that experience. So you're adding on top of that on top of

Stephan Roussounis (19:59)
Yeah.

Hello.

Daniel Saldarriaga (20:20)
everything they're getting in classes and everything they're getting the program, the opportunity for them to develop other abilities, to develop other skills, get a batch that actually can go as well, unlinked for them. And this is all outside. And I love the idea that you attach it also to the volunteering because a lot of people is looking for that. And I know BaseMatter, it's also a foundation.

Stephan Roussounis (20:35)
Yeah, I mean...

Yeah, I mean, I think there's one side where you want to show off to all your friends about what a fun time you're having, and that's what Instagram's for. But we also need to show off all the great skills that you're learning, and that's what our digital certifications are for, because they're all postable on LinkedIn. And so you kind of want to leave the end of your experience talking about your amazing lifelong memories that you've gained.

But we're going to give you a very long list of skills that you've gained and you'll be able to talk about them and you'll be able to talk about them confidently. So we believe if a student is presented or student's parents who are paying are presented with a course from us compared to a traditional language school, they're going to be able to graduate and finish their course with so many more skills and evidence of those skills than it would against any of our competitors.

Daniel Saldarriaga (21:33)
When it's going to be all of these available for Bayswater students? When they can say, OK, I'm going to enroll or apply to Bayswater now because I want to get all those skills, all those certificates, and I want to go and study with Bayswater. So when it's everything ready.

Stephan Roussounis (21:49)
Well, they're rolling out now, but we are guaranteeing that from January all 10 schools will be offering these qualifications. The Global Skills Certificate will be for everybody that's studied more than four weeks. So if you started in January, by the end of January, you'd get your Global Skills Certificate. And the digital badges will start to be issued in January as well from next year.

Daniel Saldarriaga (22:13)
Perfect, so Stefan, that's amazing. For 22 .5 then Basebladder is going to be what I will say an app skill or skill provider rather than just a language school or short courses, professional courses delivery. It's going to be more about leader or leading this part of.

of integrating artificial intelligence for all the courses, how to use artificial intelligence for all the courses, how to get all their abilities, your software skills that will get you another job, helping to get different job opportunities through programs like the YMS Scheme, the luxury hotel program. So like that's very coming into what students need and what students are looking for for the future.

So as an international student myself, I have to say that that was what I was looking for to become a world citizen. I always send this message and tell people you should be looking how to become a world citizen, how to go and study abroad and not just bring in a program or because a lot of people it's just thinking about how I'm going to study abroad and

wash dishes, do all these hospitality as a waiter. And it's not coming back with actually skills or things. No one, think if you go to my LinkedIn, no one knows that I worked for a year in La Roma restaurant. I'm a good waiter, by the way. But like people don't see that in my CV. I guess you guys at Dicewater didn't hire me for my waiter experience when you were looking at that CD. So that's what I'm telling people.

Stephan Roussounis (23:44)
I'm sure you are.

No, but these days it's more important to think about the skills you learn while being a waiter. You you can think on your feet, you can manage stressful situations, you know, it's that, you know, what Bayes was trying to do is teach people how to talk about the skills that you've gained, not necessarily the course or the work that you did.

Daniel Saldarriaga (24:03)
it

I was very proud because I can hang four plates in my hands. But now that you mentioned that I developed some different skills, that actually sounds pretty cool. you so much. Anything you want to say, like, just to, for the people or for the people who's looking to study at Bayswater in the future or any news that we don't know about the future of Bayswater before we finish?

Stephan Roussounis (24:20)
you

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think that's plenty to in terms of what we've got coming for 2025. More exciting courses, Career College in Vancouver, more professional certificates, a lower level of English required so it's now B1 plus, AI integrated in all courses, a new global skills certificate for all students that study with us for more than four weeks, and digital certifications. I think that's a load of great ways of demonstrating the real Bayswater difference in how we're.

fresh and how we're changing the market.

Daniel Saldarriaga (25:13)
Congratulations for all that work, for all that growth, and for continuous developing. So thank you so much, Stefan, for this time. Hope you can take some time to speak together in the future on this.

Stephan Roussounis (25:21)
Thanks, Teddy.

Okay, see you later.