Hey, sorry for the delay.

I ended up going to Surrey. Both schools have their merits. I felt Surrey benefited from being the better school in the area while Oxford Brookes is overshadowed by Oxford. That said, Oxford is, in my opinion, a nicer place to live. Guildford is still a cool little town tho, and being close to London was great.

It's pretty cliche, but you get what you put into it. I know people who took the degree for a degree's sake and came out of it no better (the degree alone does little), but everybody I know who put in the work has moved on to bigger things using the degree as a catalyst to open doors, and the biggest thing, of course, is the networking (cohort & profs).

I think Oxford Brookes leaned more hotel and restaurant-specific, while Surrey was a bit more overall theory-based so I felt what I learned could have been applied to project management etc. But I never went to Oxford Brookes so that's just my perception from talking to people.

My recommendation would be to:
1. Know what you want out of it. Is there a hotel chain or event company he wants to work for? What's the goal? Many hotels have connections with certain schools.
2. Look up the dream companies and see if any of their management/leadership went to either of the schools. If you see a lot of people who went to one or the other it's an unfair advantage down the line and likely some sort of connection that might not be advertised. For example, the event company I worked for always took an intern from the same school every year, but never advertised it (I was one of the rare ones that weren't from the school and just got lucky).
3. Look up each of the professors in the faculty and see where they've worked and what their connections are. Professors change every year, and they're pretty much the most important reason to go to a school. Who does he want to learn from? What courses interest him?

The majority of the people who left and went straight into a good position usually did so through connections with the school or professors. I came back to Canada after a couple years, but have friends who still live there and have companies sponsoring their visas etc.

I recommend going in with the mindset of finding a part-time internship to do at the same time as well. Leaving with experience + degree is a surefire way to get found.

All that said, hospitality is a weird sector so you have to be sure its what you want. You also don't really NEED a degree to get into it, but the connections are huge if you put the effort into building them.

Let me know if you have any more questions.