Hospitality Skills Academy

Natalie Martin from The National Skills Academy for Hospitality caught up with Brian Wisdom CEO of People 1st, last week during the Disney Institute seminars to find out more on his recent trip to WorldSkills in Calgary.

There must have been 5,000 people at the opening ceremony; it is like a mini Olympics.  The Canadian Prime Minister opened the event and it was very high profile with politicians attending too.  There was really great coverage on the events from WorldSkills and was in the newspapers daily. 

With 40 disciplines in very varied areas it turned into quite a dramatic event.  For hospitality the 3 areas focused on were, Confectioner/Pastry Cook, Cooking and Restaurant Service.

As a spectator you were separated from the chefs and the judges were all dressed in white coats with “expert” on the back and all carried clipboards- it was all very official.

I was served during the restaurant service part of the competition, I had a waiter from Mexico, and you can tell they are under an enormous amount of pressure.  I felt quite bad at one point as I used my dinner knife for the butter for my roll and I was praying that he noticed but he didn’t- I could see the judge marking it down!

All UK competitors are trained with Michael Godfrey from Sodexo and this will help us get ready for when WorldSkills 2011 arrives, we need to showcase the skills we have in our industry.

This event was a real eye opener for me and it is important that we don’t miss this opportunity to showcase the talent and build the confidence and personal development for the competitors.  This year Adam Smith from the Ritz took the gold for cooking and he has had some great support from them as well as being a previous hopeful which gave him the experience of the process.

The Korean team train people for 2 years and if they win a gold medal they receive £20,000.  We should be looking to long term training with the talent we have and preparing ourselves for the future WorldSkills competitions.  It was sad to see that I was the only person from the UK (to my knowledge) as it would have been great to see some more support for our contestants.  As a whole though I thoroughly enjoyed the event in Calgary.