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Meet our President, Tim Gardiner MBE

I went into hospitality by accident – and stayed for 40 years!

When I was young I had no clear idea of what career I wanted to pursue – although I had good qualifications on leaving school I was not keen on following an academic career. However a friend of my parent was Chairman of British Transport Hotels and hearing about his job got me interested in working in hotels as a career.

I joined the Savoy Hotel Group in London as a management trainee which involved work experience in all the departments of the business, both at the Savoy and Claridges hotels. My first job was peeling potatoes (and then got promoted to onions!) and so I worked my way through the kitchen and then on to serving in restaurants and bars and housekeeping. I also had a spell buying foods in the markets including Covent Garden. I continued my training with Grand Metropolitan Hotels at the Mayfair hotel where I worked in the bars, reception and sales and marketing department.

Later I joined Trusthouse Forte (THF) where I initially spent 13 years as General Manager of three hotels including the Randolph in Oxford, before being appointed Director of Catering for THF Hotels throughout the UK.

I furthered my experience as General Manager of the bars and restaurants operated at Heathrow airport by Forte Restaurants and was then further promoted to become Operations Director for the catering businesses managed by Forte at all the main airports in the UK. This led to my having a spell working with Welcome Break and assisting the development of brand development in Relais Restaurants on the French motorway network.

During this period the Investor in People scheme started to interest me in a big way and I was very proud when I oversaw Forte Restaurants becoming the first catering business in the UK to be formally recognised with the award at Heathrow Airport and later at South Mimms, Welcome Break.

My stint at Forte ended when my position was made redundant and after a year off I joined Arthritis Care with the brief to turn round the profitability of their hotels in order that they could be sold and the funds used for the charity’s core purposes.

Working for Arthritis Care and using my knowledge and experience as a parent of a son with various impairments and access needs led me into the world of accessible tourism and hospitality. Recognising that there were a number of other voluntary and charitable organisations with similar intentions to help people travel and take holidays, I helped to set up a consortium – Holiday Care, which ultimately became merged with Tourism for All. After a couple of years working with our previous Chief Executive, I became a trustee and have been ever since!

In 2009 I was approached by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, suggesting that TFA set up a group of key people from a wide range of organisations who could ensure that the 2012 Paralympics were truly accessible for competitors, workers and especially of visitors. So, I chaired a consortium for the next four years – Accessible Tourism Stakeholders Forum (ATSF) which was seen as having made a major contribution to these Games.

In recognition of my involvement with and 40 years in the industry I was very proud to be appointed a MBE in 2012.

I have been able to apply my lived experience and knowledge of impairment to my work

My son Richard has Cerebral Palsy and Learning Difficulties, but again he doesn’t regard himself as disabled. He has a wicked sense of humour and is really good at engaging with people he meets and putting them at their ease.

Richard has really shown me the importance for staff in hospitality and tourism businesses of seeing every person you are serving as exactly that, a person, someone who is trying to live their best life and who wants to enjoy their experience while they are with you.

Accessibility and inclusivity have come a long way in the time I have been involved…

The welcome that hospitality, tourism and travel providers give to guests with impairments is definitely a lot better today than it was when I was starting out.

I remember when my son Richard was a young child, taking him to a restaurant in his wheelchair. The head waiter waylaid us at the door and said “We’ll find you a table in the back”. It was clear that they wanted Richard to be as invisible as possible to other guests.

Compare that to our recent trip to London, again with Richard in his wheelchair. We had booked customer assistance at Paddington for our return journey, but we arrived at Paddington an hour earlier than we had planned. We asked if it would be possible to take an earlier train and the team simply swung into action, reserving us places on an earlier train and notifying the staff at Oxford Station that we were on our way. When we arrived at Oxford, a member of staff was waiting for us with the ramp and greeted Richard by name, asking if he’d had a good day. It was such a good experience.

… and I think it’s a generational thing

Businesses are definitely understanding much better that they need to give good service, to help all their customers to feel important and to enjoy life.

There seems to me to be a generational shift in perceptions and attitudes toward impairment and accessibility.

For my generation, disability was something that wasn’t talked about and it was socially acceptable to use derogatory and demeaning terms and to expect people with impairments to keep quiet and out of the way. Things have been gradually changing for the better for the last couple of decades, but this change in attitudes and perceptions really seems to have taken hold and gathered pace in the last few years.

It simply doesn’t seem to occur to young people today that an impairment should restrict you doing what you want to do – you may need to make adjustments to achieve your goals, but nothing should stop you – and young staff working in hotels and restaurants understand how to give good service to people with impairments far better than my generation did.

The principles of Investors in People still apply

Investors in People is about seeing your people as important and valued, as an asset to the business and contributing to its profit, and including them in your business planning

As part of Forte’s application process, we reviewed our recruitment procedures, the communication between staff and management and our staff training. The process was hard work and required a lot of planning and commitment, but by becoming recognised as Investors in People we improved our recruitment, reduced staff turnover, and delivered better quality service, which led customers to spend more and in turn increased our profit.

Nowadays, many businesses are trying to be better employers without necessarily going for formal awards or accreditation, but the principles of Investors in People can still be a good starting point.

For me one of the things we did as part of our review process was to turn our management structure upside down, so that the staff were shown as equally important to the business than the managers (which of course, in a hospitality or tourism business, which is based on service to guests, they are). This change really helped to focus our thinking as a management team on how we could support and help the staff to deliver success for the business and I would recommend any business, of whatever size, to try it.

Training gives staff the confidence to give great service to guests

I think that customer service training is critical for staff in all areas of the business, from sales and marketing to back of house. A member of staff who is trained will have more confidence and will enjoy their job more and the business will see the impact this has on guests.

This is particularly true in the area of accessibility, where staff can be nervous or hesitant. A staff member with no training or experience, when they meet someone who has an impairment, might ‘freeze’ and cause themselves and the guest discomfort as they try to work out how to deal with the person and the situation.

Customer service training gives the staff member a ‘baseline’ of knowledge to which they can refer, to help ensure that they behave naturally and professionally toward guests with impairments.

For my own holidays I like to go caravanning

My wife and I have been keen caravanners for many years. Spending my working life in hotels, I didn’t really want to spend my holidays in them too, and my wife’s experience in caravanning goes back to childhood, so caravanning seemed a natural choice.

Taking our caravan away allows us to switch off and indulge our love of nature and walking – and to catch up on our reading! We get to see places that we wouldn’t otherwise see and to meet nice people.

Caravanning also allows us to be flexible. We can stay in a location or move on, and even extend our time away, as and whenever we wish. (The fact that caravanning is relatively inexpensive also helps in this respect!).

We tend to stay on smaller touring caravan sites, without too many facilities, and we have never encountered issues with the physical accessibility of sites.

One area, though, where operators of caravan sites could improve their accessibility is in the depth and clarity of the information they provide. I have to say that some caravan site websites are not very helpful.

Providing information on practical things like whether there is hard or soft standing and whether there is a mains water supply available, is really helpful to all potential guests, but it can really make all the difference to guests who have impairments.

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