The sky's the limit

01 January 2000
The sky's the limit

Springboard Scotland

0141-552 5554

Drambuie Scottish Chefs Centre

0141-427 1106

Tourism Training Scotland - contact Roddy Georgeson of the Scottish Enterprise Tourism Team on 0141-248 2700

Fancy being in charge of hundreds of people, handling a multi-million pound budget, using the latest technology? Well, join the hospitality industry and all this could be yours. There has never been a better time to get a career in hospitality, and for those with ambition the sky is truly the limit.

Nearly 180,000 people work in the Scottish tourism industry. That's one in 12 of all people in the Scottish workforce. They help to serve the equivalent of 52,500 jumbo jets-full of tourists who visit Scotland every year - enough to fill Glasgow's Hampden Park football stadium 254 times. For every 1,700 bottles of Scotch whisky sold, 295 rounds of golf played at St Andrews or 3,540 trips around Edinburgh Castle, one job is created.

There are 10 times more jobs in tourism than 10 years ago. And plans for developing Scottish tourism in 2000 include creating more than 20,000 new jobs. If you want to be a part of this burgeoning industry, there are any number of schemes and initiatives out there to help you on your way to a bright and successful career.

Springboard Scotland

"If you have a good business head, combined with good skills, enthusiasm and hard work, then you can really make a go of it in hospitality," says Margaret Roberts, once the head of training at hotel chain Stakis, now director of Springboard Scotland, an initiative launched last summer to promote career opportunities in tourism and hospitality.

"The industry has changed so much," says Roberts. "Many people still see it for what it was way back in the 1960s - long hours, low pay and little respect. But the majority work straight shifts now, and new technology has really opened up the career options. There will always be the traditional roles but there are more and more specialist positions in the trade these days."

If your interest lies in marketing, perhaps you would like to be in charge of arranging a press conference, booking photographers and liaising with reporters? Or maybe your skill lies in dealing with workplace issues, such as training and equal opportunities? Well, all these skills are required by today's hospitality businesses. Few hotels are run these days without the help of human resources executives to smooth relations with their employees, and even fewer hotels and restaurants would attempt to do business without employing the skills of a marketing or public relations specialist to sell their image to prospective customers. And, as Roberts points out, there is hardly a single hotel without a gymnasium or leisure centre nowadays, so the opportunities for leisure personnel are plenty.

Hotels take on the most people, followed by pubs and bars and then restaurants. But how do you know which sector of the hospitality industry is the one for you?

For a start you may well have had an introduction to the industry at school. Tourism Training Scotland (TTS) is a scheme designed to encourage businesses to train and develop their staff and encourage better training and qualifications for those young people who could one day join their workforce. Among its stock of education and careers material are two interactive CD-Roms aimed at secondary school pupils. The first, titled Talkabout Scotland, aims to increase awareness of the industry and encourage people to consider a career in tourism. The second, Welcome Host Xtra, is designed to follow up the Welcome Host for Schools training programme to improve the level of service and hospitality offered to visitors.

If you can get to Glasgow, then walk through the doors of Springboard Scotland's first Scottish centre. This national organisation recently opened the centre to offer advice to people considering work in hospitality. But even those in more remote areas who cannot afford the time or the train fare to get to Glasgow can find out more. Springboard is planning links with JobCentres in Edinburgh, Fort William, Dundee, Galashiels, Aberdeen, Dumfries, Inverness and the Highlands and Islands to give you access to the most up-to-date career information.

A mark of how seriously tourism and hospitality are taken as career options these days is the increasing inclusion of these subjects in the school curriculum. No longer do you simply have to stick to maths, English and science. There are Scottish Vocational Qualifications in catering and hospitality, which are not examination-based but assessed in the workplace by a qualified assessor based on the standards of competence set by the Hospitality Training Foundation.

TTS is also working with the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department to develop a new tourism "Higher Still", the qualifications which will replace Highers, CSYS (the Certificate of Sixth Year Studies) and General Scottish Vocational Qualifications. Discussions have already started to try to link TTS initiatives to national qualifications, including Welcome Host; Scotland's Best, a customer-service improvement programme; and Tourism Business Success, a scheme to improve business management skills.

Peter Lederer, managing director of the Gleneagles hotel and chairman of TTS, believes people interested in a hospitality career have never had it so good, what with the reams of information available to them to help them decide and the endless variety of opportunities opening up.

"There is a lot of information and training out there, as well as people like myself spreading the message about what a great industry it is and how well you can do in a relatively short time from any age or stage in your life," says Lederer. But he delivers a word of advice for those considering entering the industry - be choosy about your employer.

"Before you accept the job, look at what training is being done," says Lederer, who believes employees have the upper hand in an industry rife with staff shortages. "Newcomers to hospitality have a real role to play in improving its image by being selective about who they work for." n

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