www.bha.org.uk
British Hospitality Association
What was your first job? I was a concierge/bell-boy for a month in a city centre hotel on a school placement in Bonn, Germany. What I really liked was that the hotel environment constantly changed. It was an extraordinary place that always reinvented itself, and that was when I knew this was the industry for me.
The BHA aims to inspire more young people to consider a career in hospitality and to encourage its members to create apprenticeships and job opportunities for 16 to 24-year-olds. Heiko Figge, member of the BHA board of directors, tells us why he loves the business
You went from a front of house role to a corporate role. Did you work your way up through the hotel? That’s exactly what I did. I completed my management training and I was then able to work in a number of different countries, but I always had ambitions to run a hotel as general manager. I have been fortunate to have been given the opportunities to run anything from city centre and regional hotels to golf and spa resorts. However, I got to a stage where
I felt that the experiences I had gained running individual properties were transferable and might also work in a corporate or central office environment. This was a huge learning curve as I had to adapt and learn to appreciate what it takes to manage properties and teams from a distance. More recently, I joined the Moorfield
Group, a UK real estate private equity fund manager, managing its hospitality portfolio. Having gained a fairly good understanding of how our industry works from the inside, I now get to see and appreciate an owner’s view on how to best maximise financial returns by providing investment and specialist asset management skills.
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What skills do you require? Frankly, whatever you choose to do in our industry, you have to be a people person and be able to work as part of a team – it’s as simple as that. You also have to believe there are always better or smarter ways of doing things to deliver savvy service excellence. Finally, always appreciate that we
are in the hospitality industry and our customers rightly have high expectations, so it is our job to be great hosts and deliver.
Is that something that still motivates you? Yes, of course. Every day I remind myself that being average is simply not good enough and that it is all about reinventing and improving our business and developing teams that consistently deliver excellent service as a matter of routine.
What piece of advice would you give to a young person considering a career in hospitality? Imagine what you can potentially achieve across different roles and functions. Imagine what it is like to be able to work in some of the finest hotels and restaurants anywhere in the world. However, nothing in hospitality is given to you – you have to work for it. I think what pleases me is that the
recognition of our industry is improving quite dramatically. We are one of those industries where talent and commitment really does matter. Age and lack of previous experience is never a barrier to success.
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