This year’s summit will welcome the biggest line-up of speakers from non-hospitality sectors yet, including technology, banking and finance, energy, education and social media.
The day’s focus will be on ‘shaping the future of hospitality’, with keynote speaker and panel debates on how to support job creation attract young people into the industry.
As part of this effort, the Big Hospitality Conversation will be used as a forum for conversation and debate on generating work experience, apprenticeships and jobs for 16-24 year olds. Pioneered and hosted by the BHA, Business in the Community and Springboard, the Big Hospitality Conversation aims to offer 60,000 new career opportunities for young people in the UK by 2016. In the past two years, over 1,500 industry representatives have attended 18 Big Hospitality Conversation events across the UK, pledging the creation of 34,000 new job opportunities.
Graeme Codrington, keynote speaker and panel member at the summit, believes that today’s young people are shaped by a different world, saying: “We are in the midst of a moment of change. We now find ourselves in the transition between the ‘before’ and ‘after’; a twilight era where yesterday’s value sets are morphing and evolving into new territory. Today’s generation of young people is the first to work in the ‘after’ world which has been shaped by a plethora of contributory factors.”
Ufi Ibrahim, CEO of the BHA, added:“As well as investing in young people, the hospitality and tourism industry is sewing the seeds for its own future by nurturing young talent and helping to stimulate economic growth. By working collectively to tackle youth unemployment in London and across the UK, the Big Hospitality Conversation has generated quality work experience, apprenticeships and jobs for 16-24 year olds. London is an economic powerhouse and principle tourist destination. The debate and speaker content at the summit will enable our industry to consider how to shape the next steps of the Big Hospitality Conversation.”