Cardiff and Vale College has exciting plans to support the local hospitality industry and is seeking your views

25 Sep 2019

Cardiff and Vale College is holding a public consultation into exciting proposals for a training hotel for the Capital Region – and there is still time for you take part.

The College has a long established and successful Hospitality department that offers not only full and part time courses in the College, but also delivers apprenticeships for employers in hotels, catering establishments and health spas across Wales.

The College offers more than the “traditional” catering and front of house service - it includes specialist areas such as bakery and butchery as well as Spa Management and beauty therapies.

The College already operates a commercial training restaurant – the Classroom – http://www.theclassroom.wales/ that has developed a top class reputation and professional reviews and competes in the Cardiff restaurant marketplace. Michelin star chefs hold “residence evenings” at the Classroom.

The College also offers through urbasba http://urbasba.co.uk/ a full Spa experience with Jacuzzi, steam room, sauna as well as traditional hair and beauty treatments.

To supplement and build on this expertise the College always has had long-term plans to create a “real life” hospitality training facility, with the inspiration for this being the world famous Hotel School in Sydney https://hotelschool.scu.edu.au/.

In the last five to ten years the Cardiff and South Wales hospitality industry has grown significantly, including the establishment of “hotel resorts” and an ever increasing demand for more capacity. This in turn has created a demand for employment in the industry and the College needs to respond to this by delivering the “real world” practical skills that employers need of our students.

The College is now investigating the possibility of working with a partner to establish a training hotel in South Wales. The partner, an established hotel operator to be selected through an open public procurement process, would run and manage the commercial operations, whilst the College would manage the training of both the staff working in the hotel and the student placements, trainees and apprentices.

Typical courses that would run include the following:

Qualifications

• Apprenticeships including Higher Apprenticeships
• Foundation degrees and HNDs
• Degrees with partner Universities
• NVQs and VROs

Subject Areas

• Food Production
• Food Service
• Culinary Arts
• Housekeeping and cleaning
• Front of house
• Customer services and business administration
• Beauty therapies
• Hospitality and Spa management

The College would welcome views on these proposals to enable us to maximise the benefit for both the hospitality industry and future learners.
Please respond via communications@cavc.ac.uk with any comments by 4pm on the 1st of October 2019.