The University Motto is, "Perfect – Seeking for ever greater perfection.
The badge is round like the earth, symbolizing both the school's internationalization and the perfection of Chinese culture. The three inner circles over the school's three areas – catering, hotel, and tourism- and interlock combine three concepts – being prospective, practical, and international.
The entire badge's appearance originates from the school flower – kapok, which looks tall, straight, graceful, and grand with brilliant colors, symbolizing the school's disposition of enthusiasm and heroism.
Three extending bars below the rounds indicate the vigorous growth and development of the school.
The middle part of the pattern is like the head of an elephant, an animal with the spirit of being perfect, honest, diligent, and modest. The simple colors with green as the base color mean infinite vitality and represent the school's energy.
The university logo is based on the original pattern, but more elaborate, to indicate the school's transition from college to university. The whole logo is round like the earth, symbolizing the school's internationalization and Chinese culture's perfection. Three inner circles over the colleges of hospitality, tourism, and cooking combine the concepts of "Humanity, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, and Internationalization." Three extending bars below the circles indicate the vigorous growth and development of the school. The middle part of the pattern is like the head of an elephant, an animal with the practical and optimistic spirit of being perfect, honest, diligent, and modest.
Laurel leaves, symbolizing wisdom, refinement, and honor. A ribbon that refers to infinity is added to present the school as a high-level hospitality education school rooted in Taiwan but takes a global view to educate excellent hospitality talents dedicated to service and creation. The pattern takes laurel green as the standard color and adopts another lush green full of vitality and glory to exhibit the prospective, outstanding, and creational image of NKUHT.
In August 1992, the school's primary office was established, and the Executive Yuan approved Dr. Lee Fu-Deng as the director to arrange relevant matters. Through three years of elaborate planning and diligent work, the National Kaohsiung Hospitality Management Academy, the first hospitality school in Taiwan, was finally founded on July 1, 1995. During the foundation process, the preparatory group visited famous hospitality schools in Europe, the U.S.A., Japan, Mainland China, and Hong Kong to learn about their experiences since there was no precedent in Taiwan. With the ultimate goal of establishing a source for talented hospitality professionals that can meet social demands, the group combined useful experiences with the best Chinese culture to establish the school.
As it was the time when technical and vocational colleges were transforming, the academy pooled the wisdom of industrial, governmental and academic circles to take many measures relevant to the era, including Sandwich Courses, Labor Education, overseas internships& visits, etc., which drew high appraisal from various circles. As a result, every year, the academy's entrance examination attracted many young students, even college graduates and masters of graduate institutes, causing a great sensation throughout society. Meanwhile, the campus' view is humanistic based on the concepts of "green throughout the year, blossoming in four seasons and presenting a southern scene with lotus and coconut" and "turning the campus into a sightseeing spot." On the other side, the academy held the Teacher Acknowledgement Ceremony at the start of the semester and the Teacher Appreciation Ceremony at the end of the semester, twice a year, following ancient Chinese etiquette. Furthermore, the academy adopted flexible designs involving no garbage cans, no iron grating for windows, and no enclosing walls. All of these measures won universal praise.
In this stage, all of the faculty and students in the academy worked hard to achieve more and more successes, which created high popularity for the academy in Taiwan and overseas after being reported on frequently by the media. Consequently, many domestic and foreign people regularly visited the academy, such as representatives from public and private institutions and relevant industries for vocational training, recruitment, or license exams. Also, officers of different levels and elites of various circles visited the academy to frequently participate in educational instruction.
However, as technology and knowledge, as well as the environment of hospitality education, has rapidly changed in recent years, it is believed that the school will face more severe challenges in the future. Therefore, the school set up the "Preparatory Committee for a Name Change" to implement the plan to actively change the college into a university after passing the 2007 Appraisal of Technical Colleges in 2008 and obtaining the qualification for a name change. With the aim of "promoting external competitiveness and inspiring internal organizational energy," the name of the school was finally changed to the "National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism" (NKUHT) on August 1, 2000, with the approval of the Ministry of Education and Executive Yuan through hard work, collective wisdom and the efforts of the entire faculty and all of the students. Besides the development direction of "Taking root in Taiwan and expanding internationally," the school has established the development idea of "More tolerant, more independent, more open, more beautiful" while implementing the original concepts of humanism, specialization, enterprise-style, and internationalization for the future. The university not only aims at becoming a source for hospitality service talents, a key partner of hospitality businesses, and a new model of hospitality education but also at constructing the vision of Kurt: "To be the hospitality university most capable of leading creation and development."
