Hospitality Careers Week offers new opportunities

THROUGHOUT the country this week the hospitality industry is opening its doors to young people, their parents and teachers to show the variety of career opportunities open to them.

The annual Hospitality Careers Week is co-ordinated nationally by the Hotel & Catering Training Company (HCTC) and the Hotel, Catering & Institutional Management Association (HCIMA).

Activities taking place range from "day in the life of" programmes, where students shadow a staff member of a hotel or restaurant, to wholesale take-overs of establishment by students.

The following events are just a few of the many organised by caterers and hoteliers for this week.

The finals of a Celebrity Snack competition organised by the HCTC's Peterborough office took place on Tuesday at the Peterborough Moat House.

Students were invited to invent, name and produce a snack for a celebrity within a budget of £2 and a time limit of 40 minutes.

Matthew Coffey, HCTC area training manager, said: "As part of Hospitality Careers Week, we wanted school children to experience and understand a small part of the hospitality industry. We have done this by asking them to become a chef in a themed restaurant where the manager wants to attract more customers."

Pupils were also asked to design a poster to advertise the snack and give a brief description of why it would be suitable for the celebrity of their choice.

Thirty students from Thames Valley University in west London travelled yesterday to the outdoor caterer Letherby & Christopher's kitchens at Ascot and tried their hand at ice-carving.

The HCTC office in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, has organised a special hospitality fun day at the local Kingsgate shopping centre for tomorrow. Local hotels and restaurants will be staging demonstrations of cooking, cake decorating and napkin folding throughout the day.

Elsewhere in Scotland visits and activity days have been organised at 15 hotels and restaurants, including the Glasgow Hilton International, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant also in Glasgow.

At the Marine Highland Hotel, Troon, students today will be applying for jobs, going through mock interviews and then shadowing the job they choose.

In south-west England careers seminars, organised by hotels and the HCTC, are being held at the Bath Hilton, the Unicorn Hotel in Bristol and the Castle Hotel in Taunton, Somerset.

Look out for full coverage of the event in next week's Caterer & Hotelkeeper.