Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay kicked off the first week of training for budding students of the second batch of a Parisian-created four year hospitality and hotel management programme.
The 32 students, of whom 19 are Bahraini, will get an intensive education targeted at making them leaders in the hospitality and tourism industry, which started from the frontline, that is, the restaurant floor.
GulfWeekly stopped by the five-star property’s re/Asian Cuisine restaurant to spend the morning with Vatel Bahrain’s new batch and get an inside view of the intensive program which is equal parts theory and practice.
The morning session started with such fundamental basics that to be very frank, this rueful reporter has barely noticed in all the Eating Out reviews we have done at five-star restaurants. Including such things as the correct way to hold a beverage bottle and the appropriate way to serve water at a table, it was illustrative of the deep level of attention top-notch hotel brands like Four Seasons pay to the guest experience.
Claire Robert, newly hired director of people and culture at the Bahraini hotel and a graduate of the Vatel programme in Paris, said: “The wonderful thing about the programme is that it gives students a ground-up understanding. Four Seasons and Vatel have a lot in common, starting with a commitment to excellence. We always strive to be the best and that comes with careful attention to every person’s journey with Four Seasons, whether it’s a customer, employee or student.”
While the programme aims to equip students with the skills and knowledge to lead the floor and kitchen, a hands-on approach like this helps them support the team wherever needed and be mindful of the operations aspects of high-level visionary decisions.
As the students learned about the different forms of cutlery and glassware, ranging from the usual spoon, fork, knife and all-purpose wine glass to the more exotic caviar spoon, crab fork and decanters, it was easy to observe their sharpening eye-for-detail.
Fabio Marques, who taught the morning session and is the restaurant director at CUT by Wolfgang Puck said: “The great thing about the students is that they are all highly passionate about the hospitality industry. They wanted to be a part of the industry to travel and meet new people, and they are all so fascinated with the process of serving people. And so far, they are committed and having fun.”
The programme, which rotates between theory and practice for the first two years, gives students an opportunity to explore various high-end restaurants and hotels and Vatel has partnered with some of the top brands in the kingdom like Ritz-Carlton Bahrain for delivering both the theoretical and practical aspects.
Julien Liscouët, general director of Vatel, said: “We chose Bahrain as the first and only location for Vatel in the Middle East for a number of reasons, including the quality of life, easy access to the region and especially, the level of hospitality that is part of the local culture here. It’s surprising to us that despite hospitality being such an intrinsic part of the culture here, there are so few Bahrainis working at the exclusive hotels. And we want to change that.”
Bahraini student Naseema Mohammed Ahmed Ali, who worked in hospitality for three years before joining the programme, was attracted to it because she had the opportunity to work with graduates from it in her previous role at an exclusive hotel in the kingdom. She said: “Each of the trainees from Vatel had really high standards. It was hard but I learned a lot working with them. It gave me more confidence in what I was doing since they knew why everything was done. And now, I want to take on the program for myself and get a degree in it.”
Graduates from the programme leave with two bachelor’s degrees in International Hotel Management, once from Bahrain, and the other from France, which is recognised across the European Union as a top-notch hospitality degree, giving students a passport to the world with their first page stamped in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
