Living and working together with students from 15 different nationalities, switching languages at least 3 times a day, traveling around the world and getting to know new people every week – this is what I do and the reason why I love hospitality.
My name is Daniela Neiderer and I am a student ambassador of Glion London. I am studying a BBA in Hospitality Management in Glion Institute of Higher Education which is a private Swiss hospitality management school. Originally I am from Germany but I decided to study on the London Campus that just opened in August 2013.
I chose London because it is a business and tourism hub, with rich history that offers a perfect location to get a deep insight into hospitality and opens the doors to the industry.
Through this blog, I want to give you the opportunity to accompany me on my journey within hospitality. I hope this shows you how the industry looks like from a student’s point of view and makes you reminisce to the beginning of your own career.
This February I started my second semester. We already completed most of our subjects such as Basic Financial Accounting, Hospitality Operations Management and Principles of Tourism and Travel. The thing I enjoy the most about our studies is that all our teachers have previous experience – a lot of them over 20 years including having had their own companies or opening their own hotels. With their experience they are able to provide us with knowledge that goes further than the theory we learn from textbooks.
Though my campus is in London, at the moment I am in Montreux in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. I flew over to Geneva with my whole class to begin our craft-based- learning (CBL) which is a six-week period of our second semester concentrating on the practical side of hospitality. This CBL is divided in three weeks of working in the service and kitchen departments and the last weeks in positions as supervisors in F&B or in Rooms Division.
Currently I am in the service team and I have to work in Glion’s fine dining restaurant in Hotel des Alpes as well as in Bellevue which is a buffet style restaurant. Both are completely different and require distinct skills. As a student, the CBL part of our year is a lot of fun because it is something new and quite a change from the normal student life. It is also really exhausting due to the fact that we are not used to waking up at 5.30 am, to work the whole day long with just a two hour lunch break to then finally finish at 8 in the evening. It is quite intense; however I think that it is necessary for the industry and our future career. As a potential new hire its much better that we not only know the theory but also have practical experience.
Next week I am going to start my CBL in the kitchen and afterwards I will work in rooms division as a receptionist as well as a supervisor in housekeeping. I am looking forward to starting in the kitchen although I am a bit scared of cutting vegetables, preparing proper meals and dealing with the chefs who are quite tough and expect a lot.
Personally, I am really interested in front office and cannot wait to start with my second part of the CBL when we will be in charge of the rooms and reservations in Hotel des Alpes. I want to learn about the check-in procedure and be able to prove my good organisational and leading skills in front of my team. This experience will help me a lot to be prepared for my six months internship in the front office department that will start this summer in July but I will tell you more about this in my next blog.
