Something is stirring down in the Valleys

Last week a low-key but meaningful event was staged in the shadow of a disused coal mine. North of fashionable Cardiff, deep in the Rhondda, where rich coal seams once formed the basis for one of Europe's most intensely industrial regions, a new world was demonstrated. The proprietors of an independent three-star hotel helped launch a CD-Rom training package for use in schools and catering colleges.

On the surface and in the wider context of hospitality worldwide, this may not sound like an earth-shattering event. About 60 people - some of them wearing chains of civic office, some of them teachers and educationalists, some of them from the world of business; but all of them somehow intrinsically linked to the local community - gathered for a few speeches and a look at modern teaching.

It may not sound like the stuff of revolution, but the bare essentials of the story fail to convey the true significance of what is happening down in the Rhondda.

Since mining disappeared from the Welsh hinterland, heavy manufacturing has been replaced by lighter industry, by hi-tech companies and by tourism. There remains, however, a deep-rooted but misguided suspicion among many families that work that doesn't demand hours of back-breaking physical labour is not work at all. And service work, in particular, is not service but servile. This is a common problem, but it is exacerbated here by a local culture that makes it hard to attract youngsters into hospitality.

So what are hotel proprietors supposed to do to recruit staff? Well, if you're Peter and Gillian Hands of the Heritage Park hotel in Pontypridd, you talk to local schools and colleges; you invite a group of teachers and lecturers to spend a week looking round your hotel; and you help them develop a newfangled learning appliance called a CD-Rom. You pack it with information about your establishment, you make it relevant to existing GCSE and GNVQ courses and you take it to market as a national training aid.

There are two reasons why this is so significant. First, it represents hospitality's ability to adapt to the change that has taken place in the economy over the past 20 years - a change that has seen catering and hospitality replace manufacturing as one of the UK's prime generators of income. Not only that, but it also proves hospitality's ability to compete in the new environment with modern technology.

Second, it demonstrates the growing willingness of individual operators to get involved in education, not for short-term gain but for the greater good of the whole industry. As regular readers will be aware, this column has long identified industry-education liaison as the only way forward for catering colleges. Here in the Rhondda, it's working.

Take note of what's happening in the Valleys. It's a stirring that should find favour in the land beyond the Welsh dragon.

Forbes Mutch, Editor

Caterer & Hotelkeeper