The best hotel and hospitality management schools in the UK: Surrey, Oxford Brookes, Bournemouth, Strathclyde and the others, and what the placement year is worth

The British hospitality degree is a different animal from the Swiss one, and a student comparing them should know the difference before reading any ranking. The Swiss schools are private, teach in their own hotels and restaurants and write two long internships into the degree. The British schools are public universities, teach hospitality inside a business school, have no teaching hotel of any scale, and offer, rather than require, a year in industry. That year is the whole argument for the British degree, and this page spends as much time on it as on the schools. Fees and application dates change every year and are left out; each university’s site carries them.

How the rankings see the UK schools, and what each list measures

Three published rankings include British schools, and they disagree because they measure different things. The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 rest on academic and employer reputation surveys and citations per paper. ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects counts research output, so large research departments rise on it. CEOWORLD magazine’s 2026 list rests on a survey of graduates and recruiters, is dominated by American departments and omits most Swiss schools, so it is a secondary signal. None measures how well a student is taught.

Below the four, Manchester Metropolitan University is 15th on ShanghaiRanking’s 2025 list and the University of Derby shares 48th place with Strathclyde on QS 2026. I have not researched either to the standard of the schools above; they are named so a student knows they are on the lists.

University of Surrey, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management (Guildford)

Surrey is where the British hospitality degree began. The school’s own history records that the BSc (Hons) Hotel and Catering Administration “receives approval as the first such degree in the UK” in 1966, and that Professor Rik Medlik, the school’s founder, led it from 1967 to 1977. The school states it was the first in the UK to receive UN Tourism’s TedQual certification. It is first in the UK and 18th in the world on QS 2026, states that it is first in the UK and second in the world on ShanghaiRanking’s 2026 list, and claims first place in the UK in the Complete University Guide and Guardian guides for 2027.

The undergraduate degree that concerns this page is the BSc (Hons) International Hospitality Management, three years, or four with the Professional Training Year. The first year is operational: food and beverage operations, rooms division management, financial accounting for service industries. Later options run to hotel investment and strategic revenue management. The course page names placement employers including Four Seasons, Hilton Worldwide, Hilton Paris La Défense, The Langham, Shenzhen Marriott Hotel Golden Bay and TUI, and graduate employers including Hilton, Grosvenor House JW Marriott, Marriott International, Four Seasons and Lexington Catering. Those are the groups whose general managers fill my books. Entry requirements and a foundation year route are on the course page. Surrey has no teaching hotel; the training ground is the placement.

Oxford Brookes University, Oxford Brookes Business School (Oxford)

Oxford Brookes taught the subject under the name of the Oxford School of Hospitality Management, a name that still appears on third party listings, and the hospitality degrees now sit inside the Oxford Brookes Business School. The BSc (Hons) International Hospitality and Hotel Management is three years full time, or four with a placement year taken as the Supervised Work Experience module in the third year. Two things distinguish it: the Bacchus mentoring program, which the course page says “will introduce you to industry leaders who will offer you personal career advice,” and its local and London relationships. The page names Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, a Belmond hotel, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, The Connaught, Marriott and Hilton among its industry links, and Marriott and Four Seasons among placement employers. The course page cites a QS 2024 position of 20th in the world; on the 2026 table the school is 29th, down from 21st in 2025, and it is the highest placed UK school on CEOWORLD’s 2026 list at 20th. The page does not mention any professional accreditation.

Bournemouth University, Bournemouth University Business School (Bournemouth)

Bournemouth’s distinction is that the placement is built into every route rather than offered. The BA (Hons) International Hospitality and Business Management runs three years full time “including a minimum 6-week placement,” or four years with a minimum 30 week placement, and both can be taken “at home or abroad”; a foundation year route adds a year to each. The business school holds AACSB accreditation. Six of its hospitality and tourism programs, including this one, the BA (Hons) International Hospitality Management and the MSc International Hospitality and Tourism Management, have been accredited by the Institute of Hospitality since July 2018, with the current cycle running to July 2028. Bournemouth is 30th on QS 2026, 23rd equal in 2025, and 9th in the world on ShanghaiRanking’s 2025 research list. The course page names no employers, so ask where last year’s placements and graduates went.

University of Strathclyde, Strathclyde Business School (Glasgow)

Strathclyde carries the longest hotel school history in Britain and has the least of it left. The university archives record that the Scottish School of Hotel Management opened on 12 September 1944 with 32 students on a two year diploma, took the name Scottish Hotel School in 1948, moved that year to Ross Hall, a Victorian mansion in Crookston, became a department of the new University of Strathclyde in 1964 and introduced a BA in Hotel and Catering Management in 1965. The school “closed permanently in 2009,” and continuing students “were transferred to the Strathclyde Business School,” which still teaches the subject.

What remains is a BA (Hons) in Hospitality and Tourism Management, usually taken as joint honours with marketing, accounting, human resource management or business enterprise, inside a business school that holds the AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditations together. The Scottish degree runs four years, with a broad business first year and specialization from the second. The placement is a third year class that “will usually last six weeks,” in the UK or abroad, with Hilton, Radisson, Glasgow City Council and VisitScotland named as past hosts. The BA (Hons) Hospitality and Tourism Management has been accredited by the Institute of Hospitality since September 2011, current cycle April 2023 to April 2028. Strathclyde is 48th equal on QS 2026 and absent from the other lists. It is the choice for a student who wants a Scottish four year degree and a triple accredited business school more than a hotel school.

Glion London, the private option

A student who wants London and the Swiss model in one degree has one option on this page. Glion Institute of Higher Education was founded in 1962 in Montreux and, according to Wikipedia, “In 2013, Glion opened a new campus in London, located in the grounds of the University of Roehampton.” The school is owned by Sommet Education, which also owns Les Roches. Its home page lists a BSc in International Hospitality Business and a BSc in Luxury Business, master’s degrees in hospitality, luxury brand management and hotel real estate, and cites third place in the world on QS 2026. The New England Commission of Higher Education, which accredits it in the United States, described it in 2021 as having about 1,600 students and “another small campus in London,” and noted that “Every Glion undergraduate student spends two six-month stints working in hospitality around the world,” with placements at the Ritz-Carlton Barcelona and Grand Hyatt Hong Kong among those cited. In July 2025 the Swiss Accreditation Council recognized Glion as a University of Applied Sciences Institute after a two year evaluation.

Two cautions. The Glion pages describing which programs and semesters run in London were not reachable when this page was written, so a student must get that from the school. And Wikipedia lists QAA among Glion’s accreditations, which I could not verify. Glion’s degree is a Swiss recognized, American accredited private degree, not a British university degree; for most luxury recruiters that is no disadvantage, and the two compulsory internships are the reason to choose it.

What the Institute of Hospitality accreditation means

The Institute of Hospitality is the British professional body for managers in hospitality, leisure and tourism, and its program accreditation is the one credential on this page that is specific to the industry rather than to business schools. The Institute describes it as “The global standard for professional programmes of study in hospitality, leisure, tourism and events,” says programs are “normally accredited for a maximum period of five years” before renewal, and reviews three things: the program’s structure, content, outcomes and industry relevance; the institution’s resources, facilities, staff and support; and its quality management systems. The review is carried out by a professional panel without a site visit. Graduates of accredited programs gain access to professional membership of the Institute. The Institute says it has more than 200 accredited programs worldwide.

Bournemouth and Strathclyde hold it on the pages I read; Surrey’s and Oxford Brookes’s course pages do not mention it, and Surrey’s industry credential is UN Tourism’s TedQual. Read the accreditation as a check that a course has been measured against what hotel managers do, not as a mark of rank.

The placement year, and what it is worth

The Swiss school writes the internships in; the British university offers a year and leaves the student to find it. At Surrey the Professional Training Year sits between the second and third year, can be a work placement, a study exchange or both, in the UK or abroad, and the university “generally does not place students” but supports them with a vacancy site and guidance. At Oxford Brookes the placement year is the third year. At Bournemouth the placement is built into both routes, six weeks or thirty. At Strathclyde it is about six weeks.

A student who takes the full year and spends it well graduates with twelve months inside a Four Seasons or a Hilton, roughly what an EHL or Glion student has after two internships. A student on the three year route has a business degree and a few weeks in a hotel. The degrees have the same name. Alexander van Gastel, later general manager of Pulitzer Amsterdam, got his first leadership job as a trainee at Gatwick.

“My first real leadership position was at a four-star airport hotel in London Gatwick when I was fulfilling my Rooms Division internship. I was only twenty and as a trainee I was responsible for the entire nightshift. I learned how to deal with a variety of cultures and personalities, and realized that in order to earn your team’s respect, you must show them that you are working as hard as they are.” Alexander van Gastel, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Nicholas Yarnell, later general manager of Six Senses Douro Valley, found the industry through the jobs he took while at university in London.

“While studying at the LSE, I started working odd jobs in hotels to make ends meet. I thought because I spoke a few different languages and wanted to travel, this may be a good fit. My first job was at Claridge’s Hotel in London as an intern, and that’s where it all started.” Nicholas Yarnell, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Torsten van Dullemen, later general manager of The Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, came to the Savoy’s front desk from Dutch restaurants.

“My first position in the luxury hotel industry was as a reservations agent at The Savoy in London, which was arguably the best hotel in the city at the time and had perhaps the most capable front desk anywhere in the world. I learned to work very hard, how to plan for guest arrivals and track their preferences, how to communicate with other departments in the hotel, and more broadly, how to most effectively run a front desk operation in great detail.” Torsten van Dullemen, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

The year is worth what the student puts into finding and using it. Ask each school what share of last year’s cohort took it, and which hotels took them.

The apprenticeship route

The United Kingdom also has a formal apprenticeship route into hotel management alongside the big groups’ trainee schemes, the route Alexander Pichel took in Germany through the hotel management apprenticeship at the Bristol Hotel Kempinski in Berlin. The current British standards run from the Level 2 Hospitality Team Member through the Level 3 Hospitality Supervisor to the Level 4 Hospitality Manager, and a degree can be reached through the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship mapped to a hospitality management degree. A separate page, Hotel apprenticeships and the other routes into hotel management, covers the apprenticeship, the hotel groups’ management training programs and the question of whether a degree is needed at all.

What the hoteliers in my books say about the British start

Several of the general managers I interviewed began in British hotels, and one took a degree first. Adrian Gray, born in Scotland and later general manager of Lotte Hotel Moscow, does not name his university in his profile, and I will not guess. What it records is what happened the moment the degree was done.

“After completing my degree, I began as a receptionist in the front office of the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh. The rest of my team had been there for many years. Only a few months after I arrived, the hotel had been bought and was under new management. Many employees resigned, and I was immediately catapulted through the crisis into a position of responsibility.” Adrian Gray, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Luc Delafosse studied hotel management in France and found his calling as a bartender at the Savoy, watching the general manager walk the floor; he later ran Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills.

“To this day, I can say that I learned most of what I know on the job and through interactions with general managers, owners, investors, and other colleagues that I keenly observed and listened to.” Luc Delafosse, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Krister Svensson, then general manager of The St. Regis Bangkok, gave the hiring manager’s view of the degree.

“In fact, I would advocate for recent graduates to still begin at the bottom of the industry to gain an appreciation for core business operations. Do not expect nor seek a managerial role right out of college. Your rank-and-file staff will know more than you, and you are bound to fail.” Krister Svensson, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

How to decide

If rankings matter to you, Surrey leads on every list that includes it. If you want the placement built in, Bournemouth, and Glion London builds in two. If you want a triple accredited business school and a Scottish four year degree, Strathclyde. If you want Oxford and its relationships with Le Manoir and the Mandarin Oriental, Oxford Brookes. Whichever you choose, take the year in industry, find the best hotel that will have you, and treat it as the degree.

Then read the chapter of The Luxury of Attention on the apprenticeship, where Svensson appears. “No one in this book taught themselves. Every master in these pages is the product of another master. That is the hidden curriculum behind every great career in luxury hospitality and the culinary arts, and it is the curriculum the schools cannot quite teach because the schools are not the place the curriculum is delivered.” The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2. The British universities, to their credit, give you a year to go and find it.

Sources

• QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, Hospitality and Leisure Management, table reproduction
• QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, Hospitality and Leisure Management, table reproduction
• ShanghaiRanking Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2025, Hospitality and Tourism Management, table reproduction
• CEOWORLD magazine, Best Hospitality and Hotel Management Schools in the World for 2026
• University of Surrey, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Our history
• University of Surrey, International Hospitality Management BSc (Hons)
• Oxford Brookes University, BSc (Hons) International Hospitality and Hotel Management
• Bournemouth University, BA (Hons) International Hospitality and Business Management
• Institute of Hospitality, Bournemouth University accredited programmes
• Institute of Hospitality, University of Strathclyde accreditation
• Institute of Hospitality, Accreditation
• University of Strathclyde Archives, Scottish Hotel School
• University of Strathclyde, BA Hons Hospitality and Tourism Management and Marketing
• Glion Institute of Higher Education
• Wikipedia, Glion Institute of Higher Education
• New England Commission of Higher Education, Pit Stop 28: Glion Institute of Higher Education, September 2021
• Hospitality Net, Glion awarded Swiss federal accreditation, July 2025