Apprenticeships are key to building the hospitality talent of the future, according to sector skills council People 1st’s chairman and chief people officer, McDonald’s Europe, David Fairhurst.

At a Parliamentary reception, addressing more than 200 delegates at the House of Commons this week, Fairhurst said: “By 2017, the sector will have grown into one which employs 2.4m people, so we’ll need to continue to grow our people and, as a means of growing our people, apprenticeships will continue to perform an important role in maintaining the highest standards of training and development.”

Des Lawson, HR director at Barcelo Hotels, said: “We identified skills gaps in our business that we knew we had to fill and the answer for us was to train our own people. My advice to other employers is to commit to apprenticeships – the benefits far outweigh the costs and generally we see direct returns within 12 months.”

Andy Smyth, accredited programmes manager at TUI UK & Ireland, adds: “We generally find that people on the programme are fully capable of making a real contribution to our organisational objectives within three to six months, while travel advisors who complete the advanced apprenticeship are, on average, far more profitable in their sales than those who have not done an apprenticeship or undertaken an equivalent length of service and development.”