The value of Mentoring - the future is bright.

Happy Friday dear friends, colleagues, subscribers, and all curious hospitality professionals.

What a week it has been, Ms Truss(t) is going as expected, sterling is dropping, and the café where I am writing this ran out of brown sauce for my bacon buttie. But it is still a Happy Friday. Being a Mentor to fantastic aspirational people is so rewarding. Especially when they are embarking on a journey into the most wonderful industry, hospitality.

So, as I embark on a gastronomic experience without Brown Sauce, I share this wonderful feedback from Oda Marie Storvold , Management Trainee with PPHE Hotel Group .

I just wanted to tell you what’s going on with my job (3 weeks in already!) as you’ve briefly seen what I was supposed to go through in the plan I emailed you some time ago. Honestly – beyond my expectations so far. It feels like I’m learning A LOT every hour. To try and make the long story short:

1. I started off at Art’otels’ office by Riverbank where everyone was super welcoming and open, so far had at least 2 breakfast buffets and lunch with the operations manager and general manager – Jennifer McCabe. Great people and Jennifer asked me what I was the most excited about for these 18 months and I said of course the hotel opening itself and the M&E part. We kept on talking and later I joined a photoshoot for some food and cocktails for pre-opening material.
2. Next, I was placed at Holmes hotel as I was meant to get some initial training in Front Office – not sure if you’ve been here, but beautiful and cute hotel with a lot of soul. Also, this was a reason I was even placed here, as Jennifer and HR mentioned it was mostly to learn basics of Opera etc. before working at Art’otel, but that I would be beneficial to do it in another ‘lifestyle-hotel’ environment rather than the corporate (however, I was told to not absorb all the ways of working there as Art’otel aims to be way cooler anyways, haha).
3. I got to join a site visit to Art’otel which was amazing. It looks like there’s a lot left to do, but damn it’s cool in terms of reception, rooms, restaurant, and bars – also a rooftop area with the pool. Can’t wait for this to open!!
4. Jennifer arranged for me to join the M&E team already last week after I showed my interest, with a plan of seeing how everything is planned for the opening etc. I started off with M&E Sales at the regional office and here again – awesome people. It shines through how much everyone I’ve met so far seems genuinely happy to be there and it’s a much more lively environment than what I would expect from an office (maybe explained by the fact that this one consists of salespeople). I have been taught things from scratch, all from addressing enquiries, creating contracts, setting appropriate rates for group bookings + m&e, understanding budgets and reports, the communication flows between client – sales team – hotel, and I joined a site visit one of the days at Westminster for a client, too. Later on, I was also a part of the focus meeting with the GM and a few others where future events were discussed, and the sales manager even stopped the meeting to give me some extra details to make sure I was able to follow.

I am going through a decent list of bullet points of what is relevant for me to learn, and I will spend some time in legal, revenue, marketing, and proactive sales to see how these departments also affect the sales teams’ jobs. I think the next department will be M&E planning! Which I imagine will be good when the opening of the hotel seems to be coming up very soon.

This is the first time in hospitality where I’ve seen this amount of joy and passion for one’s job and I have even sneaked in a few extra hours here and there just because I did not want to leave myself, haha. Hopefully, the vibe continues!

I hope this bible of a text was at least a bit interesting or entertaining for you to read!?

And on an even more important sidenote: those dogs that are on your photos of ?Be the Change? - are they yours? Makes my heart melt every time they appear on my LinkedIn feed, omg.

So, as a fellow hotelier, I ask if YOU have signed up to be a mentor yet? Now is the time to deliver real change. All those hours of providing guidance, support, relevant advice, and proactive listening are all worth it. Especially when you get feedback like this. Now is the time.

Be The Change

Footnote - please note that my personal views are reflections on personal experiences and views of what could make the hospitality industry attractive as a prospective career and lifestyle choice. As I continue my quest for change, I encourage you to share freely as you see suitable to you and/or your special set of circumstances. Feedback is important and I will receive it with open arms.