Young People Are The Future

The Hospitality Industry has a great opportunity to create a trained youthful workforce that empowers young people to find a stability in their future life.

Already the hospitality industry is a major employer of people aged between 15 – 25 years old.

Our industry as a whole has a capacity to provide thousands of jobs for this age group.  And every hospitality business big or small including the Lodge can do its part.

The Lodge – Our goal is to set young people up for life…

With our business, young people have a chance to learn skills that will serve them for the rest of their professional lives.

Here at The Lodge, we feel hospitality work is the perfect training ground to teach young people skills such as …..

Working in a team

Communicate effectively

Problem solve

Take responsibility

Provide exceptional customer service

Remain professional

Showing Young People A Career Path

Many young people view hospitality as a kind of half-way job…

Rather than a meaningful career opportunity.

That is why so many businesses see such a high staff turnover.

The Lodge as a business has trained many young people, some of which have taken the path into this industry others have followed in different paths but they have all learned the fundamental basics of life training ( Hospitality is the university of life )

By investing in young people and helping them prepare for employment, here at The Lodge on Loch Goil we feel we can make an incredible contribution both to local youth and the local community.

Please see two testimonials from our amazing young people, who have been trained by us and moved on to their future paths in life…

Calum Evans

Calum came to work for me when he was just 15 years old and what an amazing young man he is.

His attention to detail is second to none, now he has his own business and working out of Asia and I am so proud of him…

Beware Barron Hilton there is new blood on the hospitality ladder…

I started working at The Lodge on Loch Goil in 2006 at the age of 15. I worked at The Lodge on Loch Goil over a ten year period from weekends at school all way through to the end of university. From my first shift, I found a caring hard-working team who supported each other while striving to provide the best of their guests. It was a small operation that delivered a level of luxury quality and service that only boutique hotels can manage. Alice’s constant attention to detail and commitment to making sure every aspect of the guest experience is the perfect example to learn from.

The trust Alice and Iain place in young people is incredible. My first full-time position was at The Lodge on Loch Goil during the summer before I moved to university. It didn’t matter about my age, the management gave me all the responsibility I could take, and within four months, I learnt and grew more than I could ever have imagined.

Boutique venues like The Lodge on Loch Goil the perfect environment to learn in. Working as part of a small team allowed me to see the complete picture of hospitality and learn from every department. Within a typical day, you will fill roles in the front desk, housekeeping, kitchen, events, marketing, sales. All the departments that a hotel anywhere in the world would have.

As the summer management assistant, with no prior experience, I learned everything from Alice and Iain. Starting with the basics like how to write a professional email to and taking phone calls, these are life skills that every job needs. Over the summer I was able to see and learn how to manage my own time, staff, suppliers, event planning, conducting show rounds, event marketing, and invoices to name a few. The confidence and real-world experience working at The Lodge on Loch Goil gave me has been invaluable for my career progression.

Following university, I joined a hotel management company in Bangkok. I was recruited due to my experience, and by the time I left that company, I was running online marketing for 37 hotels across the Asia Pacific region. My recruitment and career progression were a direct result of the experience I learned at The Lodge on Loch Goil. A luxury hotel is a luxury hotel, and the same skills apply, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Bangkok, Sydney or Loch Goil.

I still work in hospitality and travel, I now run a specialist marketing agency which helps hotels advertise to LGBT travelers. The Gay Passport is the leading gay guide in Asia and runs the largest gay influencer network globally. I’m proud to say that we work with 100s of leading hotels around the world.

One of the most surprising but valuable aspects that I still use is learning directly from the owners on how to see their view of hospitality. Branded hospitality is often removed from the property owners and the insight gained from working directly with owners at The Lodge on Loch Goil has been so useful throughout my career.

I could not thank Alice and Iain enough for their help and guidance over the years. I’m confident to say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without what I learned working with them at The Lodge on Loch Goil.

Kristina J von Kaehne

Kristina arrived at The Lodge, and my goodness never spoke a word to anyone she was such a shy girl but! now she is like a peacock, she left at the end of September to follow her dreams into Law, well beware the legal industry you have a young “Brenda Marjorie Hale “ following in your steps…

I first started working at the Lodge in September 2017, when I was seventeen and stayed there for a year. Initially, I helped out at weddings during the weekends but by April I was trained to serve in the fine dining restaurant and started working full time once I left school.

To say I was nervous is an understatement – I had never worked in the service industry before, let alone a five-star establishment and was scared I was going to make a mess of it. On top of this, I was extremely shy and found talking to strangers quite intimidating. However, Alice, Iain and the rest of the staff were extremely welcoming and didn’t expect me to suddenly know everything. Both Alice and Iain are very good teachers and taught me everything I needed to know, from how to serve in the tree house to how to pull a pint. Even when I inevitably made mistakes, they were really understanding and showed me how to correct them.

By the end of my time at the lodge, I had been trained how to work behind the bar, serve at weddings and in the restaurant and in the various areas of housekeeping, all skills which are the same across the industry, around the world. I have also been able to meet many different people, including celebrities and film directors. Some have even offered me opportunities that I would have never been able to access before. Another outcome is that I have saved more than enough to spend a year out, travelling and working in Europe. However, the most important thing for me is that I have become so much more confident and have learned to assert myself to people. Next year, I am going to uni to study law and have always been slightly put off by the public speaking aspect; but this is no longer an issue for me.

Overall, this has been a fantastic experience for me and I cannot recommend it enough. Even if you’re not looking for a career in service, you learn so many things which can be used in all other jobs, whilst working with amazing people and earning money at the same time.