Keeping neat and making treats with Kingsweston School

What goes into running a successful hotel? Students at Kingsweston school visited Aztec Hotel and Spa to find out.

One of the key things to get right is the greeting, and Liz and her team gave the students a very warm welcome indeed. We learned that guests come to the hotel to unwind. One of the best ways a hotel can do this is to make sure that the rooms is spick and span and ready to relax in. With over 150 rooms in the hotel, the house-keeping staff have their work cut out for them keeping them neat and tidy.

Emma, the head housekeeper, showed the students how to make a bed to hotel standards and achieve those all-important hotel corners. The students lifted mattresses, smoothed sheets, and fluffed pillows. They even learned how to change a duvet without becoming a Hallowe’en ghost!

After a quick break, it was back to work.

As the hotel is also a spa, it is important that the bathroom offers as soothing an experience as possible. The students were shown how a bathroom should be set up, with towels, soaps, and shampoos before having a go themselves.

Finally, it is all about those special touches which makes a hotel visit such a treat. Emma demonstrated her towel origami skills and showed the students how to make swans, elephants, and bears from folding towels.

The students from Kingsweston who took part in the housekeeping experience said that they hadn’t thought about working in a hotel before but after today, they could see themselves doing this in the future. The hotel was impressed with how well the students worked and how well their animals turned out!

Hotels are about more than just the rooms. A little while later, Kingsweston returned to Aztec Hotel and Spa to find out more about the kitchen and restaurant.

We toured the kitchens of the hotel and spoke to the team who worked in them. We found out that it can be very noisy in kitchens and the staff who work in them must speak very loudly to be heard over the sounds of dishwashers and cooking.

After seeing the kitchens, the students got hands on with some baking. Working with chef Elouise, the students mixed together all the ingredients for a cupcake, making sure there were no lumps or bumps in the mixture and double checking the ingredients to make sure there was the correct amount of everything.

Ingredients mixed; it was time to decorate. Elouise showed us how to fill up a piping bag with icing and how to make patterns. The students could then choose from a range of toppings to finish their decoration. They could pick between sprinkles, chocolate, popping candy and more! The cupcakes were a sweet treat to share and eat after the session ended.

The students were able to show off their baking and decorating skills and produced beautiful cakes.

The experience of work the students from Kingsweston School got at Aztec Hotel and Spa showed them that the life skills they were already developing, like cooking and bed making, could be used in jobs. The students were generous with their skills and taught us lots of words in British Sign Language. The staff from Kingsweston told us “I never knew this sort of session was even offered – these pupils were all able to achieve something in a short session which they will remember.”

Kingsweston were keen to learn more about food, and so we went on a trip to FoodWorks in Weston-Super-Mare to find out more about food production and where food comes from. FoodWorks has development kitchens where chefs can try out new recipes and access specialist equipment as well as business units, which can support growing businesses in the food sector.

The students went on a tour of the facilities and found out about all the incredible equipment that can be used in a kitchen, including a 3D chocolate printer and a carbonisation machine – which makes drinks fizzy!

Some of the businesses that are based at FoodWorks were happy to show students around too. Peppadew toured us around their pepper plant, showing students how to prepare the peppers for freezing by squeezing all the juice out of them before experiencing just how chilly their big fridges got. Afterwards we could warm up by sampling some warming pepper bites. Mochi Bros talked us through how some of their equipment worked and how they stored ingredients for their chilled treats. The team at FoodWorks told us that they found the way the students interacted with their tenants was a rewarding part of the experience for them.