Institute of Hospitality – Aspiring Manager Awards Dinner 2012


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Last night, on behalf of the Institute of Hospitality London Branch as their Vice Chairman I was hosting their Aspiring Manager Awards Dinner  together with Antonio Fernandes FIH, which was held at The Langham Hotel, London. The event was attended by students, Hospitality Managers, General Managers and Directors of companies representing some of our top hotels and suppliers. The event’s main sponsor was Acquire Services and this year the Institute of Hospitality London partnered with People 1st Training.

Each organisation attending can take a table at the dinner and nominate their Aspiring Manager winner who receives membership to the Institute of Hospitality, a luxury weekend break and this year a four day Management Development course run by People 1st Training. The Aspiring Manager winners are those individuals that have been recognised for giving an outstanding contribution to the development of the organisation they work for, and demonstrated a commitment to their colleagues and customers.

At last night’s dinner our Guest of Honour was Suzanne Jackson, Executive Director for the Hospitality Guild who gave a very inspirational speech on her views of hospitality. She highlighted that we need to be focusing on our future hospitality managers, nurturing and developing them by not only promoting the industry in schools, but also to ensure that our current hospitality team members are given the continuing professional development they need to become our future managers, which is what the Institute of Hospitality stands for.

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The Aspiring Manager Awards winners for 2012 were not only aspiring but also inspiring:

Roy Sommer – Food and Beverage Manager – The Cavendish Hotel

Derek Rostel – Human Resource Manager – Four Seasons Hotel London Park Lane

Maria Palmer – Purchasing Support Manager – Acquire Services

Manav Jaitley – Cluster Revenue Manager –  The Montcalm nominated by Rate Tiger

Andrew Moore – Cluster Group Senior Conference and Events Manager – Hilton Worldwide

Lara Wisdom – Communications Manager – People 1st Training

Fenja Zimmerman – Conference and Events Operations Manager – The Langham, London

and our heartfelt congratulations go out to all of them – however that was not the only presentation for the evening. Our current Chairman for the Institute of Hospitality London Branch is Eamonn Cole FIH who has served the committee in this role for the past 4 years. At the end of 2012 he is stepping down, and Michael Schaefer MIH will be stepping in to his role from January 2013. So to thank Eamonn for his hard work over the years his committee presented him with a gift to show their appreciation. This surprise presentation was made to Eamonn by Peter Ducker FIH who will be the new Chief Executive for the Institute of Hospitality taking over from Philippe Rossiter in the new year.

Overall the evening was a great success and professional photos of the event were taken by Chris Mann and these can be viewed by entering the event code iohlondon2012. I am sure over the next few days and weeks more photos and videos of the evening will also be posted on the Institute of Hospitality’s Facebook page.

For me though, the highlight for the evening has to be meeting two students from Bournemouth University that I invited and came up especially for the event, and what I was delighted to see was that they had their own business cards – something I advise my clients – see my article on The Power of Networking. These two ladies are definitely ones to keep an eye on and I have no doubt in the future they too will become Aspiring Manager winners for whichever organisation they end up working at.