CLASS of

HOSPITALITY management graduates leaving the Scottish Hotel School in summer 1964 were arguably better prepared for the workplace than many of today's newcomers. That is the view of some of those who left one of Britain's most respected hotel management training grounds three decades ago.

The mid-1960s were a time of optimism, growth and change. Technology was thin on the ground and classroom theory was often regarded with scepticism by those in an industry characterised by on-the-job training.

Employment prospects were excellent for anyone with hotel school training, although no equal opportunities legislation meant that for women early opportunities were rather more restricted than for their male peers.

Yet for those like Anne Martin, talent, determination and changing social attitudes meant an impressive career progression from her Strathclyde University beginnings. After graduating with a first-class degree and travelling scholarship, she headed off to research organisation development and human resource management in several Swiss hotels. "It was more interesting than staying at home and it paid better," she explains.

She spent the rest of the 1960s back in the UK as a graduate trainee with J Lyons and then with a contract caterer, a job to which she was lured by the promise of a company car.

In 1971, she joined Ladbroke Hotels as a personnel and training manager, which was followed by a stint as divisional personnel and training manager for the group's newly formed Dragonara Hotels (later to become Hilton Hotels).

But a drive for quick progression saw her leave the hospitality sector for a marketing post with Mars. This led to jobs as European marketing director with the DHL Group in the early 1980s, head of marketing services for British Coal and eventually chief executive at Rochdale Training & Education Council.

Although she left the hospitality industry a long while ago, she believes that hotel school training has been relevant to her career throughout. "The course was the right personal and vocational development at the right time. It taught me invaluable interpersonal and organisational skills," she says.

Her advice to young people emerging from college these days is simple: "Get an international job in the USA or Europe, so you have that experience under your belt, because two to three years of overseas work looks good on a CV. It's a maturing process and it widens your horizons."

By contrast, fellow graduate Michael Herriot has remained on UK soil for all the intervening 30 years. He has stayed within the hotel industry, and since 1989 has been managing director of Richard Branson's Voyager Hotels.

He claims to have no regrets about his choice of career and says: "At college, I specifically wanted to become a general manager. As it turned out, I became the youngest general manager in Grand Metropolitan."

He stayed with Grand Metropolitan for 12 years before joining a small chain which was then swallowed up by Mount Charlotte, his next employer.

Contrasting the 1990s hotel and catering management students with those from 1964, he notes: "They don't have the practical knowledge that we shared. We came out knowing how to clean rooms and make beds. Now they're all oriented too much towards marketing. I'd like to see more trainee managers ready to take off their jackets. If there's a problem in reception or the restaurant, they need to be there. At Voyager, we look for such special people."

Among the graduates from that year who took the idea of working abroad more seriously was Jennifer Morsia (née Webster) who today runs a 60-bedroom hotel with her Italian husband in Salsomaggiore near Palma.

She also encountered prejudice against women in those pre-equal opportunities days when she attempted in vain to secure a management post on leaving hotel school. Job opportunities for her were limited to more restricted areas such as bar, reception and book-keeping.

She recalls: "British Transport hotels didn't take females in management then. It was horrible to come out as a new trainee and be told that I couldn't be a manager because I was a girl."

But she bit the bullet, worked in bar and reception and then enjoyed several stints working in Swiss hotels and on Jersey. With the changing social climate of the late 1960s, she was finally able to get management positions at two Scottish hotels.

She is now in Italy running her own hotel where she's been for more than 20 years, but remembers with fondness her hotel school days. She says of today's industry: "Hotel schools now are very specialised and there seems to be a lack of practical experience. The students expect to get an assistant manager's job straight away without any experience. They think that because they have a degree, it will be a passport. But with such drastic unemployment as here in Italy, it doesn't happen like that."

Fellow holder of a diploma in hotel and catering management from that year is Ruth Jones (née Macdonald) whose destiny has also led her and her family to distant shores.

Since 1983 she has been in Malawi, where she first went to help train hotel staff under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme.

Having now formed her own company, Skills Facilities, Jones is putting into practice three decades of hotel experience, ranging from housekeeping and reception to joint management of a private hotel in Inverness.

She has worked as a reservations supervisor in Alberta, Canada, as executive housekeeper in Tanzania and in a variety of posts in mostly independent hotels across Scotland and England.

Having first travelled and worked in the USA, Peter Taylor returned to the UK to take up a trainee management job with J Lyons' Strand Hotels which led to a succession of general manager posts within the group. Stints further up the ladder with the big names of the then Trust House Forte group, Thistle Hotels and Stakis led him eventually to open his own properties.

The first was in Fife and his latest venture is the 48-bedroom boutique Channings hotel in Edinburgh.

He might be regarded as a true all-rounder and one who has embraced the industry from the start.

Although he admits that if he had had perfect eyesight, he would have joined the Navy, he recalls that when deciding to follow the hotel school diploma, he knew he did not want a desk-bound job.

He says: "I was looking for something different and Strathclyde provided it. My advice to students now would be to travel, and get that out of your system while you're still young and fresh."

Like his contemporaries he laments the trend among recent hospitality graduates to remain remote from the nitty-gritty of hotel life.

Although he praises the closer links that many colleges have forged in recent years with the industry, he feels that many of today's students are removed from the essential skills of hotelkeeping.

"Many have no intention of going into this business while many more have decided to specialise in sales and tourism. My peers were prepared to work at the basic end of things while these days, the students/graduates are less willing to get their hands dirty," says Taylor.

These people represent just a snapshot of where a professional qualification has led a group of hospitality students through a period in the industry which has witnessed a sea change in its nature.

What is clear is that manifold opportunities still exist for the newcomers of 1994 and that experience gained through travel and rolling your sleeves up are assets valued by the generation who will be their employers. o