As Vice Chairman for the Institute of Hospitality London Branch – I organised their 7th Annual Student Learning and Development Forum which was held at the Premier Inn Kings Cross yesterday. This event proved extremely popular with 100 people booked to attend with students not only from London, but also as far as Bournemouth.

The theme for the event was “How to Become a Hospitality Rising Star” and the day was full of interactive fun workshops. The day started with Springboard holding a quiz on the HLTT industry, and then the students were given a taster session on the WorldHost Principles of Customer Service course and their newly launched Principles of Supervisory Customer Service Performance. They then had the chance to hear from some of the Institute of Hospitality’s past Aspiring Managers and were able to question them on their careers to date and learn more about the Aspiring Manager Awards.

After lunch UKSP, presented on career mapping and how they can register with UKSP to look for career opportunities, and then Learn Purple gave a fun session around employability and networking. The students were then introduced to the Institute of Hospitality London Branch’s coaching programme which was piloted last year and ten lucky students were drawn to be this years coachees and to have a member of the Institute of Hospitality London branch coach them for free.

One of our longest serving committee members Stephen Blundell covered his 60 years of experience in the hotel industry and undertaking project work in 94 countries. He emphasised the present and future need of marketing as the key element of a successful business. His present business plan to 2017 was explained and he had two aims for the Institute of Hospitality – 1) to have 25,000 members and 2) to have a Royal Charter granted.

The sessions were completed with a quick fire quiz between teams of the college and university students covering all the topics from the day, where the winning team were given one of the coverted Aspiring Manager Award trophies!

The day then ended with a chance for the students to network of course!

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