Speakers
Profesor Ian Scarth
Ian began his long and varied career as a trainee hotelier within the old Savoy group of hotels, where he moved from trainee to middle management and was fortunate enough to play a key role in some major events such as state visits and the royal wedding to the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
In leaving the hotel industry he became an operations director with two of the UK’s biggest food service companies, during this time he was responsible for some of the biggest contracts within Aramark and then the Compass group. Wembley stadium being an example of such a contract. In stretching his experience from food and beverage management in fine five star palace hotels to managing international football stadiums for major sporting and entertainment events, Ian has built a unique portfolio of skills that he puts to good use in his present role.
Back in 1999, Ian moved into the field of hospitality education, and as a faculty member at the renowned Ecole Hotelière de Lausanne he has taught strategies in Food and Beverage management and service operations management to undergraduate and postgraduate students, this includes the exploration of innovation as a strategic management tool. He has also worked with numerous hospitality companies to implement innovation initiatives that have helped drive sales, control costs or improve quality.
Ian is a fellow of the Institute of Hospitality and a past winner of the Olive Barnett award, which he now helps judge. He has recently organized, on behalf of the Master Innholders, a simultaneous, live, two-day conference broadcast of the UK General Managers’ Conference to ten hospitality management schools across the UK and Europe and is now working on expanding this around the world in an effort to bring industry and education closer together.
Research interests: Service innovation; Customer satisfaction measurement systems and proactive customer feedback systems.
Lars Thomsen
Lars Thomsen, born in Hamburg/Germany, is one of Europe’s most influential futurists of our time. His highly visionary theses may often provoke, but Thomsen depicts, like no other futurist in Europe, the opportunities ahead of us. He consults many of Europe’s leading businesses, corporations and institutions regarding trends, changes and the evolution of future markets.
Having founded his first consulting company while studying information science and business, Lars soon started to lecture about trends, innovation and how they will chance our lives. The exploratory focus of Lars Thomsen and his team at future matters® – a think tank he founded in 2001 – is on topics such as the future of work, innovation in the fields of energy and resources, electric mobility, corporate culture, marketing and media, artificial intelligence.
The charismatic cosmopolitan and serial entrepreneur regularly meets with some of the most visionary minds of our time and is a member of the “World Future Society”.
Lars Thomsen is 41 and lives with his family close to Zurich.
Profesor Ian Millar
Ian Millar’s double expertise in the areas of hospitality and information technology sets him at the forefront of new developments in the international hospitality industry.
In addition to his BA Honours degree in International Hospitality Management from the University of Brighton, UK, he is a certified computer technician (Comptia A+). He is also a Certified Hospitality Technology Professional – the first European to receive this qualification for hospitality professionals, which is awarded by HFTP (Hospitality Financial and Technical Professionals. Professor Millar is a frequent presenter at international IT conferences and is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Hospitality Technology Education Conference (EHTEC), a group of global hospitality experts. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of HFTP as the group’s educational representative, with the responsibility of helping HFTP to achieve its strategic goals and to help with European expansion.
Ian Millar began his career as a Food and Beverage manager in the UK and then implemented various hospitality IT systems for companies based in London and Paris. He joined EHL in 2001.
Professor Millar has been instrumental in developing the exceptional resources and expertise available to students at the school. He created EHL’s unique CyberHotel, a specially equipped and fully functional centre on campus that features best practical IT solutions in hospitality technology currently used in the industry. Professor Millar has also set up a Student Chapter for the European HFTP at EHL which regularly hosts guest speakers and meetings, and whose main purpose is the education of EHL students in the areas of technology and finance.
Gérard Wolbert FCSI
Gérard Wolbert (50) has pre-university education Business Economics and Higher General Secondary Education. Gérard is a consultant for over more than 12 years. From 1997 to 2004 Gérard was a standalone consultant. In 2004 he started to work on different projects with a business partner. Since 2007 he is owner and senior consultants of GUEST. Before that Gérard was in the board of directors of a catering company in health care; a food & restaurant manager for over 5 years in a food retail company. In the early eighties he managed his own restaurant with a high quality standard.
He joined FCSI in 1998. His missionary part of life consists on being Chair of FCSI The Netherlands, Project manager Restaurant of the Future, Board of Directors of FCSI EAME, EAME representative on the Board of Directors of FCSI WW.
Richard Hoyle
Richard Hoyle is an experience worldwide platform speaker and trainer. He is co-director of UK based MRD. He is married with two sons and seven grandchildren.
Today he is lucky enough to work around the world helping people and teams work better together to achieve their goals. Carl Gustav Jung the Swiss psychologist said his aim was to produce a system of understanding whereby man would no longer kill each other over the meaning of words. By working with Jung’s concepts Richard like to think I am adding my bit.
Teams can achieve so much more by releasing the creative potential of the team members. All must believe in the power of their personality, not be restricted to their comfort zones and respect the gifts that all bring.
He asks his audiences to be willing to interact with him in the workshops. The subject of learning about oneself is too serious to take too seriously, so we need to enjoy the journey. The jokes are a bad as you can get but the overall effect has been described at a recent conference as "awesome".
His hobbies include his work and keeping fit in body and mind. Skiing and not forgetting to get the last lift of the day back to my side of the mountain, and mountain biking without falling off.Great events in his life, in addition to those really special times with my family such as holding newly born children, have included, visiting so many interesting countries, flying on Concorde to New York, Orienteering in Sweden, and "discovering" Mayan temples in Belize.
Alfred Gafner
A passion for food and a long standing family tradition influenced Alfred Gafner to pursue a career as a professional chef. Another reason to enter the culinary field was the opportunity to gain international work experience, travel, study, and exchange knowledge.
After the formal training he continued to learn the classic cuisine in Geneva. Soon after, the Hilton International kitchens became his workplace for 18 years based in locations like Amsterdam, Vancouver, Caracas, Cairo, Manila, Seoul and Zurich. The key learning’s from this experience was flexibility, find out about different cultures and their cuisine, adapting to people, respecting local customs and their social values. Travelling also broadened his horizons in regards to the sheer wealth of diverse cuisines. In each location he had to start learning all over again, which made it a pretty humble experience.
His next position in 1991 was Director of Food Production at Gate Gourmet Airline Catering in Zurich, Switzerland. He managed a large kitchen brigade that was producing up to 50’000 meals/day for 35 different International Airlines, a fantastic experience. He concentrated on developing industrialized production methods like standardized recipes, meat tumbling, hot fill and modified atmosphere packaging. Food preservation technology by extending shelf life has fascinated Alfred ever since.
In 2006 Alfred joined Compass Group Switzerland Ltd, a world leading Food Service Company, where he is focusing on Production Planning & Steering.
In his spare time he enjoys being a visiting lecturer in Hotel schools, with topics on “Advanced Food Production Methods”. He urges the students to the fact that Continuous Improvement, Lean, Poka Yoke, 5S… should not fear to enter a kitchen!
Alfred lives in Kloten, Switzerland with his wife Zeenat. Alfred’s hobbies include tending a little vineyard, visiting places like Myanmar or relaxing with the fishing pigs in the Kingdom of Tonga.