No trainees during summer - but more in 2021

As difficult as it is for the Hotel Berlin, Berlin - as a top training company awarded by the German Hotel and Restaurant Association - unfortunately no new trainees can be taken on this year. How are you supposed to learn to plan events and conferences if none of them take place?

How is one supposed to go through different stations from the office to the kitchen to the reception when most of the employees are on short-time work and many areas in the hotel are not staffed at all? Instead of 38 trainees as usual, there are currently only 16 and even they cannot go through all the steps of their training smoothly as planned, as a report by the Abendschau also shows.

Hotel director Frank Rücker also sees something good in the current crisis situation: "Because guests are missing, we can concentrate on the trainees who are in the house much more than is sometimes possible under full operation. In this respect, there is always an opportunity and we are taking advantage of it now," he says in a feature of "livenachneun" on the German TV channel Ersten.

The situation is similar in other companies in the industry right now, but one is sure that next year the travel waves will be higher again. Giving up on new blood wasn't easy. "We take our responsibility seriously and don't want to lower our training standards," says Frank Rücker, explaining why even first-class applicants had to be rejected with a heavy heart. The first new trainees, who had already signed a contract before the Corona crisis, will start in February 2021 at Hotel Berlin, Berlin. From next summer at the latest, it should be back in full swing here in terms of trainees. "Always here with the applications," says Frank Rücker, who is already advertising the first positions: "We're looking forward to it!"

© Florian Kottlewski