Copyright © 2011 Kanda Gaigo Alumni Association(KGAA). All rights reserved.
With the wish to provide the students with a facility to learn English language and culture in the same environment as the one in the United Kingdom without leaving Japan, in 1994, Kanda Gaigo Group has established an international training facility combined with hotel called "British Hills". It recreates the authentic atmosphere of the United Kingdom in Japan. In order to realize this concept, there is a person who has been working at British Hills as a leader in the service sector for 16 years, and that person is Mr. John Stewart Renaldy. This article will tell the story about the experience of Mr. Renaldy dedicated to serve as an ambassador representing the British culture to realize this exceptional educational facility. (Text: Takeshi Yamaguchi, Photos: Yutaro Yamaguchi / titles omitted)
I was born in Edinburgh in 1950. I was sent to boarding school in Newcastle. And I graduated from college and then university there. When I was at university, we protested against the government. It was the time of the hippie movement and we camped out for weeks in Hyde Park in London. At Hyde Park, I remember seeing a concert where the Beatles and the Rolling Stones played together.
In my younger days, I did think about becoming part of the police force because I watched movies with policemen. But my eyesight wasn't good enough to be a policeman. So, my next dream was becoming a chef. I enjoyed cooking. However, since I didn't want to spend my life in the kitchen, I focused on learning the entire hotel management, and so my major in the Newcastle University became hotel management.
After I graduated from university, I joined a hotel company called Scottish & Newcastle under the logo of Thistle Hotels. I got a four-year graduate degree but I was still washing pans, making beds and rooms. I started from scratch. That's how one learns the business essence.
Anything can happen in the real hotel. Being a manager requires to do everything by myself, not just to tell the staff what to do. In this way you gain respect and the staff actually sees you can solve the problems. For those reasons, one must have various experiences and must be able to do the routines necessary in each part of the hotel work.
I worked at Scottish & Newcastle for five years, and after I left the company, I joined a company called Star International, which owned casinos and nightclubs, not only hotels. I was responsible for their buildings and their properties there. Whenever our competitor opened new location, we would find some other location close enough to open as his competition. I was responsible for signing various contracts and managed the construction companies. I also interviewed managers and assisted them to run the location.
About five years, I left Star, and I went self-employed. At that time, England went through a bad period of recession, so in the places where hotels and nightclubs had gone bankrupt, we moved in with my staff and reopened the hotels. My role was to reopen the hotels because it's easier for real-estate companies to sell an opened building rather than a closed one. Around that time, I found one advertisement, which was the application for the British Hills. It was in 1994. (1/9)