Elite resort gives hospitality students industry exposure

By Mark Muckenfuss

There’s nothing quite like seeing the real thing. 

In late April, students in Cal State Monterey Bay’s Sustainable Hospitality & Tourism Management program visited the high-end Bernadus Lodge and Spa in Carmel Valley. After passing through a vineyard to reach the hotel’s main entrance, the students toured the resort’s gardens, lobby, meeting rooms, restaurant and wine cellar before sitting down to a casual lunch. Along the way, they met several key personnel, beginning with general manager Hartmut Ott.

“I’m very excited about hospitality,” Ott said. “It’s taken me all around the world. It can take anyone around the world. It’s a lot of fun.”

Ott said he was looking forward to forging stronger bonds between his resort and the SHTM program and its executive director Paige Viren.

“Paige is fantastic, and we’re looking to build that relationship,” he said. 

Perhaps to that end, one of the program’s students, Katelyn Baggett, took the opportunity of being on site to apply for a job. Three days later she was hired as a front desk agent. 

Viren said Baggett’s experience is an example of the cooperative network her program has established with area resorts and other guest-oriented businesses. 

“Like many of our partners, Bernardus Lodge and Spa helps provide our students with invaluable insights into the hospitality and tourism industry,” Viren said, “ensuring students cultivate essential competencies for effective management in the hospitality and tourism field.

“Hands-on learning experiences play an essential role in shaping well-rounded professionals,” she added. “Providing students with jobs, internships, networking opportunities and mentoring is extremely valuable.”   

As part of their learning experience at Bernadus, the students filed down the stairs to the resort’s wine cellar, where 25,000 bottles of wine lay in largely unmarked racks. Colleen Kelly, who heads the wine operation, told the students she and others who work in the cellar know its contents by heart.

“It’s all done by memory,” Kelly said. “We call it cellar brain. We have three minutes from when the guest orders the wine to come down here and get it back up to the table.”

Looking up a bottle’s location and finding it would take too long, she said.

Chef Christian Ojeda talked to the students while they enjoyed a lunch prepared by his kitchen. Emphasizing his connections with local growers, he told the students it’s not enough to simply serve good food.

“There has to be a story behind it,” Ojeda said. 

Stories create memories, he added. And when guests see or enjoy a similar dish in the future, “that memory will always transport you back to Bernardus no matter where you are.”

He also told the students that their education isn’t over once they leave CSUMB.

“It’s always a revolving circle,” he said of the hospitality industry. “If you don’t change, it will leave you behind.”

Bryan Gutierrez, of Marina, is a second-year SHS student. He said he took the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Ojeda to increase his knowledge of the culinary side of the industry, adding that he would eventually like to work in that area of hospitality. 

“It’s perspective changing,” Guitierrez said of the visit to Bernardus. “There are so many aspects of running this place.” 

Deloris Harris, of Modesto, is a fourth-year communications major. She agreed with Gutierrez.

“A lot of times we just think it’s hotels, but there’s much more to it,” Harris said. “Just seeing people in the industry, it makes it more real.”