By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 24, 2007; C01

Arthur Turner has been to enough restaurants in the Washington region to know good service when he sees it. At most restaurants, the Kettering resident is greeted kindly, seated promptly and a waiter quickly tells him the daily specials.

But, he said, the culture can be a little different in Prince George's County.

"You ask for a table and the host says, 'Okay, hold on.' Then, she'll yell, 'Do we have a table over there?' There is nothing professional about that," he said. "You ask a question about a special, and they say, 'I don't know; I never had that before.'"

Such encounters can be found in any establishment, but even Jack B. Johnson, the county executive, said recently that he was concerned about the quality of service in some Prince George's restaurants. And with upscale eateries and one of the largest hotel and convention centers on the East Coast opening next year at National Harbor, many in the county are hoping that a new program will go a long way toward tackling what Turner called a "longtime source of frustration" -- shoddy customer service.

With a $1 million grant from the developers of the mega resort, Prince George's Community College recently opened a Hospitality and Tourism Institute.

The institute is not a collection of Miss Manners courses. Rather it offers a wide range of credited and non-credited courses on every aspect of the service industry, with classes on hospitality, management and food and beverage service.

The program is designed to prepare students for entry-level and executive positions at hotels, restaurants and other venues.

Students can earn associate degrees in hospitality services management and culinary arts, as well as certificates in other programs.

Some of the classes began in the fall, and summer courses are underway.

Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center is funding the institute over three years. The money pays for the program's start-up costs for faculty, materials and equipment, and $150,000 will be used for scholarships, college officials said.

"Wherever we have opened a hotel we try to contribute to that community," said Sheldon Suga, senior vice president and general manager of Gaylord National. "It's how we feed our future employment opportunities."

During a recent class at the institute, on the college's Largo campus, four male and three female students sat with rapt attention during an Introduction to Hospitality Industry class taught by Troy Hengst, director of the institute. The students, ranging from teenagers to mid-lifers and senior citizens, discussed what they considered to be good service in a restaurant or hotel and how that service made them feel.

The students were also schooled on proper interview attire and the art of communicating with prospective employers. Hengst said an interviewer once asked him what his greatest weakness was. His answer: "I said everything. I am not a master of anything yet. I'm constantly learning. The manager said it was the best answer he'd ever heard."

Suga said Gaylord has made donations to top college hospitality programs. The donation to the community college is the first time the company has poured money into a start-up program.

Hengst, who previously ran the hospitality program at Trocaire College in Buffalo, said the community college had a hospitality program in the late 1990s, but it ended because of low enrollment.

The institute, which will partner with local high schools to get students interested in the hospitality and tourism industry as early as ninth grade, has generated more attention in a short period of time than Hengst expected. He said that in the past couple of months he has fielded nearly 300 calls from people asking about courses.

That's encouraging to Howard Stone, a former county school board member, who said he often walks into a restaurant in the county and is confronted with what he called a feeling of indifference among the employees.

"The service can be lackluster," Stone said. "I wouldn't say they are rude, but it's an attitude that you don't care about what you're doing."

Stone said patrons want to feel as if they are "the most important person at that particular moment" when they are dining or visiting a hotel.

Fred Rosenthal, who owns four Jasper's restaurants in Maryland, including two in Prince George's, said one of the biggest challenges restaurants face is finding qualified workers in line and management positions.

"It's becoming much more difficult," said Rosenthal, who is also chairman of the Restaurant Association of Maryland. "The demand has grown, but the supply [of workers] has not grown."

Rosenthal said Gaylord was "visionary" in realizing that it needed to do something to help produce qualified workers. He said restaurants often have to train their employees on the simple art of communicating with people.

"You have to understand that many people have never had a job dealing with the public," he said. "We have to tell them how to present themselves, how to handle complaints. . . . Sometimes it's difficult to teach."

Gaylord officials said they vet the best for their companies. They call them "Stars," people who exhibit a "smile, teamwork, attitude, reliability and service with a passion."

The company will hold a massive hiring event in January, with plans to hire 2,000 full-time, part-time and on-call employees. To help produce a few of those "Stars," Suga said Gaylord's vice president of "Star culture" is advising the Hospitality and Tourism Institute at the college.

Gaylord National officials have also made trips to Morgan State University in Baltimore and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where some county residents are enrolled in hospitality courses, to make them aware of future job opportunities.

Johnson said he wants county residents to be prepared when Gaylord National opens in April.

"We have to get our young people willing to work," he said. "Gaylord will have a high standard."

And right now, Turner said, many restaurant employees in the county might not meet it, mainly because some managers are not teaching it. If the managers are poorly trained, the employees will be poorly trained, too. The result, Turner said, is bad service.

"I am hopeful that we will see an improved level of service" because of the institute, he said.

In his Introduction to Hospitality Industry class, Hengst heard from students about their own experiences at restaurants in the county.

"Some of these places, they don't want to give you the service, but they want their 20 percent tip," said one student. "You can almost feel it. It's getting so ugly."

Randall Downing, a student from Fort Washington who works at a local restaurant and wants an internship with Gaylord National, said it's easy to identify a good server.

"I'm a good server," he said, adding that he knows that he is a step above some of his colleagues because there are times when he makes between $15 and $20 an hour based on the service he's given customers.

Hengst's point precisely.

"Service is given," he said. "But hospitality is felt."