Overview:
Hotel management is a career with considerable responsibility from early on and a lot of personal contact with staff and guests. Hotels are certainly never dull. They never stop, and you’ll find yourself working long hours and wanting to go the extra mile simply because you love the job.
To be successful in hotel management, you need the energy and enthusiasm to keep your team motivated day in day out, and to be able to stay interested in the job even when you’re doing routine tasks. You need to be able to think on your feet, be creative and know how to plan and organise.
If you have these qualities, you like dealing with people and have a good knowledge of finance and business principles, hotel management is an area where you can progress really quickly.
To see a Hotel Manager talk about his job on video, click here to check out Liam Doyle, General Manager of the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin.
The Workplace:
As a hotel manager, you’re on top of all ongoing activities, so your workplace is everywhere in the hotel. As a general manager, you might start in the morning at your desk, checking enquiries or reading notes from staff members about any incidents that happened since the previous day, you’ll then do a walk around the different departments to catch up with staff on any issues.
You might head a team meeting to run through the day’s schedule and highlight any VIPs or groups arriving. Later in the day you will have to spend a period of time at your desk doing things like looking after paperwork, dealing with key clients, analysing activity and setting out strategies to improve different areas. In the afternoon or early evening, you’ll get out onto the floor of the hotel and make sure all is running smoothly – guests like to see the general manager out taking a hands-on approach
The Career Path:
Hotel managers are the driving force behind a hotel business. Early in their careers they focus on achieving operational excellence – making sure that the particular area of the hotel under their responsibility operates smoothly and effectively. As they become well experienced in operational matters, they take on the additional responsibility of implementing strategies that create a competitive edge for the establishment, setting goals and standards and overseeing staff performance to achieve these strategies.
The beginning of the hotel management ladder is a position as a Section Supervisor or Manager. You will be responsible for supervising operations in a particular area, such as the reception or the bar, to make sure everything runs smoothly and the standard set by management is being observed, e.g. as a Restaurant Manager you would be overseeing reservations and allocations of tables, ensuring that the meal service runs smoothly and that the area is clean, ensuring that all machines and equipment necessary for the operation of the section are working, supervising the preparation and running of events and monitoring payment handling.
Once you have some experience as a manager, you will become a Duty Manager, which is very much an operational role with involvement in all areas of the hotel. In hotels there must be a manager ‘in charge’ at all times, in the absence of the senior management (e.g. at night-time). The overall function of the duty manager is to ensure the highest standard of excellent customer service is offered to all hotel guests at all times. This means checking all departments to ensure smooth running on a regular basis throughout the shift, helping out in various departments during busy periods and dealing with customer queries and complaints.
On the next rung of the ladder, as a Department Manager, you would be responsible for a whole area, e.g. Food & Beverage, which covers all restaurant and bar operations within a business. You would be implementing health and safety procedures, stock-taking, ordering, dealing with suppliers and coordinating the activity/ work schedules of operational staff in the division. You will monitor staff performance, organise training and recruit new staff as necessary, resolve customer complaints, ensure that equipment and facilities are properly located and suitable to allow the division to work well, evaluate and improve procurement and storage procedures, and work with other departments to improve performance, e.g. the kitchen to evolve the menus and wine lists and Sales & Marketing to identify opportunities to increase sales.
The General Manager is the most senior executive of a hotel or venue, responsible for its successful operation, reporting to the owner or executives of the parent hotel chain. The ultimate goal for most people studying Hotel Management is to be General Manager of a property. As the GM, you will work closely with your Heads of Division to establish the operational plan and budgets, set pricing and sales targets, establish the standards for service to guests, and everything else that defines the hotel product. To be a good general manager, you need to gain experience in as many areas of the hotel as possible and to know exactly what it takes to manage different departments, so you will be able to guide and inspire all the staff, and have the experience and flexibility to juggle several issues at once and deal with unexpected situations.