First contestant fired as The Apprentice kicks off in the Austrian Alps

Emma Rothwell has become the first contestant to be fired from The Apprentice, as series 19 of the BBC business show began in the Austrian Alps.

Thursday’s launch show saw host Lord Sugar tell 18 budding entrepreneurs he was “looking for a Bezos, rather than a bozo” as he sent the contestants to Innsbruck tasked with setting up and running a package tour, which they had to sell tickets for.

Lord Sugar then split the group into two teams, with one running a tour at the glacier, followed by observer Baroness Brady, and the other running a tour in the forest, followed by former The Apprentice winner Tim Campbell.

Before sending the teams out, the 77-year-old told them some of their CVs contained “more crap than the River Thames”.

Despite competing with Nadia Suliaman for the role, contestant Emma Street was nominated as project manager for team glacier while Anisa Khan was nominated as project manager for team forest.

The forest team decided to offer an e-bike tour, along with honey and bread-making, saying they would start their price at 200 euros and go down to 100 euros at the lowest.

The glacier team offered a sledge ride to the bottom of a mountain, where they would greet their guests with Austria’s national drink schnapps, and said they wanted to start at 175 euros and hold out for it as long as possible.

The teams then set off to negotiate prices for tickets to attractions which would form part of their tour.

Both selling teams initially found it hard to sell tour tickets, with the teams being told they were “too expensive”.

The teams eventually begin to drop their prices, with air conditioning company owner Dean Franklin telling his forest team to target people who were physically fit enough to ride the e-bikes.

But his plan fell apart just moments later, when Carlo Brancati attempted to sell a tour to a 97-year-old man from Denmark and his son.

As prices began to tumble below cost, both teams begin to sell, with telemarketing company owner Keir Shave on the forest team doing rock, paper, scissors with customers to decide what price they got.

The teams then successfully carried out their tours, with no customers asking for a refund.

The glacier team ended up with a profit of 230.60 euros, winning the challenge, while the forest team suffered a loss of 166 euros.

Lord Sugar sent the winning team away to a “great house” with welcome drinks, before turning his attention to the losers.

The former Tottenham Hotspur owner was not impressed by Shave’s rock, paper, scissors selling method, telling him “this is not what you apply in business”, adding that he was “gambling with the company’s money”.

Lord Sugar said he felt the blame was with the sales team and allowed the rest of the members to return to the house.

He went on to tell Brancati that “it seems to me that you’ve got no colleagues here who’ve got a good word to say about you”, which he said “sends a warning to me”.

But Lord Sugar eventually told Rothwell “you’re fired” after she sold no tickets and Sugar said she had not “explained to me what you did do”.

The former Amstrad owner told the rest of the team: “It’s a shambles, a bloody shambles, go back to the house all of you.”

Essex-based Rothwell had hoped to use Lord Sugar’s £250,000 worth of investment to take her online gift store business “to the next level”.

The Apprentice will return at 9pm next Thursday on BBC One when the contestants will visit Abba Voyage and be tasked with creating a virtual pop star.