Ashdown Park work placement on the up

Wych Cross-based Ashdown Park is owned by Elite Hotels. The group has developed links with local schools, colleges and universities in a bid to "get the message across that we don't just employ chefs, waiters and people for the jobs that tend to spring to mind if you think about hotels", says Graeme Bateman, managing director of Elite Hotels. "We employ a huge variety of other staff, from gardeners to general maintenance workers," he adds. Nathalie Cole – thrid-year hospitality management student at Portsmouth University – has spent a year on a management programme working in various departments of the hotel. She is currently spending the summer working as head waiter of the public lounge. From Cuckfield, 15-year-old Warden Park School pupil Daniel Wills spent a week at the hotel also working in the lounge as well as the sales office and estates department that looks after Ashdown's 186 acres of parkland. The hotel's personnel and development co-ordinator Lu Whale organises the work experience programme, now in its ninth year, hosting at least 30 students a year. "The programme is very popular and there is always a waiting list for placements," she says. Bateman adds: "The work experience programme helps showcase the fact that employees don't necessarily need to have had previous hotel experience." The group says after joining straight from school or as mature applicants with no background in the hospitality industry, many employees have scaled the career ladder into senior and management positions.