MSc International Hotel Management

The School has obtained funding from the Savoy Educational Trust to award scholarships, grants and prizes to outstanding students. Each year the School awards Savoy Educational Trust scholarships to the International Hotel Management students who have achieved the best results and produced the best MSc dissertations.

The Savoy Educational Trust is a leading independent UK charitable trust. It was established and endowed by four directors of The Savoy Hotel Limited in 1961. Its main aim is the advancement and development of education, training and qualifications within the hospitality industry, including hotels, restaurants, food service, leisure and tourism. The Trust aims to adopt good practice at all times and invest in worthwhile projects with other well-known and respected partners.

The University of Surrey has one of the world’s most extensive ranges of books, journals and e-resources in hospitality and tourism. The Library’s acquisition policy is to purchase every text published in this field. It is also a designated depository for World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) publications.

Academics past and present from the Hospitality Group have contributed to a vast number of well-read and respected books over the past 40 years and more. For instance, Fred Lawson’s textbooks on facility design have made a lasting contribution to the hospitality field. Professors Peter Jones and Andrew Lockwood have published a number of highly regarded textbooks in the area of operations management, and many of the team have contributed chapters to edited texts.

Current Hospitality Group academics are involved in a wide range of leading publications as authors, editors and members of editorial boards. The team routinely writes for the Hospitality Review and Professor Jones has a column in Onboard Hospitality.

The Hospitality and Food Management Subject Group (HFMSG) conducts research into management policies, procedures and processes that lead to enhanced performance, both for large and small companies competing in all sectors of the hospitality and food industry.

HFMSG seeks to understand consumer behaviour in our target industries and thereby identify successful strategies, core capabilities and best practices that lead to competitive advantage.

Research to date has focused on key concepts such as productivity, quality, service, benchmarking, value and consumer behaviour. This contributes to the understanding of these concepts through both the development of underpinning theory and empirical studies of the real world, using a wide variety of appropriate research methods and tools.

Details of the group’s research reports, occasional paper series, other publications in peer-reviewed or trade journals and presentations given to national and international conferences are available on the School’s website. Members of the Group have also published a number of seminal textbooks and standard works in the field of hospitality.

Research to boost productivity

The first-ever research centre to respond to the challenge of so-called poor productivity in the hospitality sector – one of the UK’s largest industries – has been established by the University of Surrey.

The Centre for Hospitality Industry Productivity Research (CHIPR) plans to undertake research projects at all levels and across all industry sectors, including hotels, restaurants, pubs and the contract food service.

“Despite its huge turnover, the hospitality industry has had consistently low levels of productivity according to a number of studies,” said Professor Peter Jones, who heads the Centre. “A recent McKinsey study reported the UK hotel industry to have 50 per cent of the USA’s productivity levels.”

The UK hospitality industry currently employs over two million people in over 300,000 outlets. The turnover is well over £40 billion and hospitality is the country’s largest invisible export.

A Centre of Excellence for the Hospitality Industry

There are plenty of good reasons to choose the University of Surrey for your specialist postgraduate degree.

• The Surrey Business School at the University of Surrey is an internationally recognised centre for management research and teaching, accredited by AACSB and AMBA, and the recent Research Assessment Exercise confirmed us as the premier business school in the UK for hospitality and tourism
• The University of Surrey has one of the best graduate employment records in the UK
• The School has excellent links with industry and routinely invites industry hospitality speakers to talk to students, such as: John Stauss, Vice President, Four Seasons; Jonathan Langston, CEO, TRI Hospitality Consulting; and Michael Hirst, former CEO, Hilton Hotels
• Surrey academics in the hospitality field have been internationally recognised with awards for teaching, scholarship and research. As acknowledged experts in their field, they are asked to comment in the media on hospitality stories; Professor Peter Jones has appeared on the BBC, CBS and CNN, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal
• Forty years’ experience in teaching and researching hospitality means we have an extensive network of alumni working in the industry all over the world, including, to name a few: Robert Earl, co-founder of Planet Hollywood; Karen Earp, GM of the Four Seasons in Bermuda; Kit Chapman, founder of the Brazz restaurant chain; and Alan Parker, former CEO, Whitbread PLC

Founded over 25 years ago, the society aims to provide those Surrey Business School students with a specific interest in food and wine with a chance to learn about and experience the practical side of the hospitality industry.

Primarily, this is conducted through organising events both on and off campus with the help of dedicated Faculty staff and our ever-generous Board of Friends, made up of leaders in the hospitality industry. In 1985, Paul Milsom, an undergraduate studying Hotel and Catering Management, read an article by Kit Chapman in The Caterer and Hotelkeeper, in which he criticised his university for the lack of a food and wine society for students. This prompted Paul to write to Kit and suggest that he would set up the society if Kit would give his help and support to the cause. This he readily did and so the society was created.

Every year the society arranges a variety of fascinating and exciting visits to some of the most fantastic venues across the UK, and even ventures abroad; it experiences the heart of this great industry, namely fine food, fine wine and outstanding hospitality.

In 2007, Kit decided to retire as president of the society after his 21-year tenure, but it was with great pleasure that the society welcomed back Paul Milsom to assume the role of president. Since taking on the role, Paul has added a number of his own industry contacts to the ever-growing Board of Friends and has taken a very active role in the operation of the society, maintaining a proud history whilst building on successes and developing further into the twenty-first century.

For more information, visit the Food and Wine Society website.