Doc Mornet boasts

a five-star career

It was an ad in a Sunday newspaper that first piqued the interest of Dr Reinie Mornet in the hotel industry.

 

He had just completed his second degree when he noticed that the newly founded Hotel Board was looking for inspectors to rate hotels. From 400 applications and after a year as a trainee at several hotels in Cape Town, he was appointed as one of seven inspectors.

 

What followed was a long and successful career in the hospitality industry where he made a name for himself as a mentor, academic and pioneer.

 

Reinie was instrumental in the establishment of a new hotel school on the Auckland Park Campus of the former Goudstad Teachers' Training College. He was the head of Technikon Witwatersrand's hotel school when he was asked to become the new school's full-time marketer and fundraiser.

 

Thirty-nine months later he had raised R32,4 million and in 2005 the new hotel school opened its doors under the banner of the University of Johannesburg.

 

He describes it as the cherry on the cake of his 33-year involvement with the Technikon Witwatersrand.

 

Life in Potchefstroom

 

Reinie started his study career in 1961 in Pretoria while working full time. He passed his five first-year subjects and was subsequently offered a bursary for full-time study at the former Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (now the NWU).

 

After his BA and BAHons studies, he completed an MA in South African history before obtaining an HBA and MBA in the late 1970s. Not long after that he obtained his doctorate in business administration, with research focusing on specified hotel management training with specific reference to the South African hotel industry.

 

He fondly remembers his alma mater and especially his time in the Uitspan men's residence.

 

“There were only 36 of us in the residence, with an unbelievable camaraderie and a spirit that did not always allow for adequate preparation time for tests.”He was one of very few students who owned a car and if that blue Fiat 600 could speak, it would transfix you with tales from his student years. Such as the time that eight students squeezed into the car after a rugby match in Klerksdorp for the ride back to Potchefstroom.

 

He distinguished himself as an excellent sportsman. Apart from playing hockey, he captained the university's first cricket team and in 1965 he was elected as student council member for sport.

 

Thirty-nine years down the line he is still a member of the Blue Bulls Rugby Referees' Society, and as a long-distance runner he has run more than

32 000 kilometres and finished 64 marathons and 556 half-marathons since 1982.

 

He has been married to Petra for more than 30 years and the couple has four children and six grandchildren.