Aberdeen’s luxury hotel, The Chester Hotel, created a competition for pupils from Milne’s High School in Moray to design a brochure in French, in a bid to encourage hospitality as a future career path and highlight the importance of languages in the industry. The winners of the competition visited the hotel yesterday to learn about the workings of an award-winning hotel.
Earlier this year, The Chester Hotel’s general manager Chris Quinn-Waugh was invited to host a workshop, as part of Scotland’s National Centre for Languages’ Business Brunch, for 150 school children from 15 schools in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire on how languages can lead to success in the hospitality industry. Following on from this, Milne’s High School invited Chris to host a workshop for their S1 pupils to give them an insight on a career in hospitality.
The pupils, aged between 12 to 13-years-old, were invited to get creative and outline a new brochure for the hotel. They worked in groups to create brochures in French, putting their language skills to the test, and ten winners were chosen. The winners, plus two teachers, visited The Chester Hotel on Wednesday 21st September for a fine-dining lunch and a show-around to learn about each area of the hotel. The pupils met heads of department from restaurant and kitchen to marketing, housekeeping and reservations, to hear more about what it takes to be successful in hospitality.
Chris Quinn-Waugh, general manager of The Chester Hotel, says: “We were delighted by the creative designs and enthusiasm shown by the pupils. We were extremely impressed that not only did they demonstrate their understanding of maintaining the brand, but they also focused on promoting Aberdeen as a destination which is hugely important for building tourism to the area.
“We want to support pupils in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire as best we can and view the success of this project as the first of many more to come. A career in hospitality can be very rewarding and we want to demonstrate this to pupils, as well as showing them how valuable knowledge of languages can be in furthering your career opportunities. After all, these bright, young pupils may become the city’s hospitality stars of the future and we want to nurture their enthusiasm and passion for the industry.”
Lindsay Lyall, Principal Teacher of Modern Languages at Milne’s High School, says: “This has been a fantastic project for the pupils to get involved in. As well as encouraging them to develop and put into practice their language skills in a real-life context, it’s also given them an understanding of how these skills can be used in the future. Our pupils were very excited to learn about the behind-the-scenes working of a luxury hotel and find out about the various career-paths available in the industry, especially the relevance of language skills in hospitality and travel and tourism.”
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