Our students have successfully finished their first practical period in the hotels of Addis Ababa. Our student Dibora has talked with us about the challenges and accomplishments of this intensive internship time.

After about three months of classroom education in our Hospitality Institute things got really serious for the first time for the students. In a four-week internship at diverse renown hotels they had to demonstrate their accumulated knowledge and skills. However, the internship offered them the opportunity to expand their knowledge and in particular to gain their first practical experience in a real hotel’s daily routine.

This experience was appreciated by nearly all students and they already miss the intense and instructive time in the hotel. Ms. Dibora Mulugeta, who was allowed to get her first experiences in the Friendship Hotel, tells us that practice also means hard work and involves sometimes unexpected difficulties.

Especially the beginning of her internship turned out as a jump in at the deep end, because she not only had to deal with the high workload from the beginning on, but also with familiarizing herself with the location and customs of the hotel. But her motivation, her energy and the local staff, with whom she had befriended quickly and to whom she still maintains contact, helped her to overcome these initial difficulties quickly. The tasks of the girls included, among others, making beds, dusting and cleaning the furnishings, the soils and the bathrooms and also identifying and disposing of misplaced objects. Different methods helped them to keep track and maintain the correct work sequences such as the so called 7-step-program or the ABC-method, which means:

• A: Away with the old
• B: Bed
• C: Cleaning with chemicals
• D: Dusting
• E: Everything in the bathroom
• F: Finish the bedroom

Most students agree that they had a very educational time and are already looking forward to the next internship. Finally, not only our girls, but also their supervisors were highly satisfied with the performance of the girls, so that almost all students received top marks and a recommendation for the next internship.