Friday 28 November 2014

'Education, education, education'

Increasingly, the young of today are being encouraged and urged to get further education. Many turn to studying hospitality management, travel and tourism, and related courses, as a stepping stone to a career in hospitality.

Giles’ advice is simple: don’t study hospitality, or travel and tourism, or related.

Those courses will teach a lot of theory, and will introduce the student to a great many models, working practices, and give them a great sense of revenue streams, a knowledge of business, of advertising and media. However, those courses will rarely prepare the student for the realities of working in the sector.
In hotels and restaurants, what is often (admittedly not in all cases) more valued is experience. The practical experience of attending to customers for 18 hours solid. The practical knowledge of coffee service, wines, mis en place and table settings. The practical skills of juggling room allocations; those that need to be serviced and cleaned, those that are ready, those that need to be allocated to specific guest, what rooms can be given to those early check ins, and what rooms can be sold to last minute guests. Giles can (and does) give a whole list of things which are much better learned in practice than in theory- but those will suffice.
The interpersonal skills, pressure, time and financial constraints (to say nothing of allocating often scarce resources)  and creative thinking needed when setting up a major event in a hotel can rarely be taught in the controlled atmosphere of a school.

Such practical knowledge is only gained by practical experience, and by being in the job day in, day out. Indeed, that experience, and the skills it brings, will give the hospitality worker a greater grasp of the industry, than the theory and overview taught be hospitality course.

However, Giles readily and willingly admits to being old school in that sense; ‘I never studied hospitality management, or similar. I do not even have a clue what they teach on those courses. I have worked with such graduate’s, though- and they are like a fish out of water on the floor, despite their education. I have, however, worked in the industry for nearly ten years, with no academic qualifications in the sector whatsoever. My qualifications are experience and more experience.’
As regards business practices, business models, regulations, logistics, and similar, such courses are often superior to learning on the job- and making classic mistakes along the way, which damage the business and the brand.

These days, getting a further or higher education is increasingly a gamble and risk- and an expensive one. Gone are the days when adding BA or BSc after your name was a golden ticket to a high flying career and high earning future. With too many graduates (not necessarily university graduates), the market for educated but inexperienced highly educated twenty somethings is saturated.
Increasingly, such education is an investment for the future. More and more graduates will only see the rewards of their education after several decades, when their earning and carer prospects will finally outstrip those of their non-graduate colleagues. In hospitality, the benefits of that theoretical, business knowledge will indeed greatly benefit the individual when they are at General Manager or Restaurant Manager level. Until then- they have a lot to learn, despite their education.

Giles instead offers different advice to the young hospitality hopeful- as blunt as ever. ‘Don’t waste two or three years, your early twenties, your effort, energies and money, on that hospitality course. It is not as valued as you think, and only gets you extra debt. Quit further education- and start working in the sector instead. That will teach you all you need to know.’ In this aspect Giles should know; he started out as a busboy in North America- and has stepped in as an Hotel Duty Manager in London in recent years.
Indeed, many in the industry (admittedly some do) do not have such qualifications- or any, for that matter.  Further, many have a weird and wonderful knowledge and skill set; actors, musicians, history graduates, engineering students, dance teachers, freelance translators, single parents, and so on. The list is endless.

With so many students working in the sector to pay their way through increasingly expensive and worthless degrees, the sheer variety of academic and specialist skill and knowledge makes the hospitality workforce a wonderfully diverse, stimulating place to work. Everyone has their own niches areas of random knowledge, which makes the workplace more fun than if everyone had just studied hospitality.
As such, everyone can learn from each other- and not just customer service and mis en place. Indeed, this makes the average restaurant staff one of them most highly educated workplaces.

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