Dean Profile - Jerry Hartley
Dean of the School of Hospitality, Food and Events Management
I came to UCB after spending a number of years in the hospitality industry.
After leaving university with a degree in Hotel and Catering Administration, I worked for Impney Hotels in Droitwich Spa, mainly based at the unique Chateau Impney Hotel. The main market for the hotel was meetings, conferences and functions and, after my initial training, my role was the selling and organising of these events. It was hard work but I had a great time. I learned the real value of team work, everybody in a venue has an important role to play in making an event a success. The hospitality industry is full of variety and challenge. To manage successfully you really have to use your head. In my job every client was different and you have to learn to read people and adapt your own behaviour to reflect this. The client has to trust you to manage their event. Selling space and organising events is also very much about capacity management, you have to use the space to maximum effect. It's a real jigsaw puzzle matching the right bookings to the available capacity to ensure customers are happy and you maximise income and profit.
I've been at UCB now for over 20 years and it seems to have passed very quickly. The programmes we offer are so much more varied now reflecting the way hospitality, food and retail management have developed. All these industries are very customer orientated and fast moving. Every organisation has to constantly renew itself to reflect changes in its market and environment. My teaching now is mainly focused on the area of innovation and innovation management. Our graduates need to leave here understanding that management is not just about managing what you have in your operation today, it's also about developing the operation for tomorrow. Innovation is one of the key challenges facing managers – how to get ahead and keep ahead of the competition. With global communication systems business practice is very transparent - if someone implements a good idea today the whole world knows about it tomorrow and seeks to replicate it.
Hospitality, food and retail are such diverse industries. There is a wide variety of sectors you can work in and job roles as well. Students in the School of Hospitality, Food and Events Management study core business modules in marketing, finance and human resource management as well as technical, specialist modules. Transferable skills are developed through project work, teamwork, case studies, seminars, presentations and industry experience. Students should be well equipped to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities when they leave. Your career path may take you anywhere in these global industries, you may work for a multinational corporation or a small proprietor run business. You may even set up your own business.
I was asked to think of a memorable moment for this piece. I'm going to cheat and pick two, one from my industry days and one much more recent. The first has to be a memorable moment because I can still remember so well the moment when I took my first conference booking. I started off being allowed to take restaurant and accommodation bookings and then progressed to meetings and conferences. My first decent booking was a two day conference for 30 delegates. I had to show the organiser around the hotel, explain how we could do everything and there was some negotiating involved as well. I remember being terrified of losing the business and when confirmation of the booking came through I felt like jumping up and down and punching the air – though you look a bit silly in the conference office if you start doing things like that. Coming up to date, last year I gave a keynote speech at the AHSA International Research Conference in Cape Town. AHSA is the Association of Hospitality Schools in Africa. Meeting people involved in hospitality and tourism education from 14 African countries was certainly memorable. It struck me that while there was such diversity across cultures and background, as educators we had so much in common. Many of the issues that they were discussing in Africa were high on our agenda too. The world is getting smaller all the time.