Sooner or later, most people have to use hotel services. Arriving on a business trip, visiting relatives or being in the city for entertainment purposes, guests choose a hotel to their liking and rent a room for a certain number of days.
Depending on the class of the institution, attendants can offer customers a range of standard services or some additional service.
Who works in hotels
The hierarchy of hotel personnel, in fact, is the same as in many other organizations: there are service personnel, middle management and senior management.
In order to occupy a position of a lower level, it is enough to have industriousness and discipline, and managers can not do without special education (Department of Hotel Business). After graduation, graduates themselves decide who to work with, focusing on the specifics of their knowledge and their personal preferences.
The tasks of the hotel staff
On the shoulders of service workers lies the provision of round-the-clock hotel operation. Cleaners and maids are involved in cleaning and maintenance in rooms, corridors, halls, on stairs and in the courtyard of the hotel. Other employees take customer orders, deliver food and purchases to them, help with loading and unloading luggage, keep their clothes and shoes clean, and do a ton of other similar tasks. The advantage of such relatively simple professions is the absence of the need for special training, for example, at the Department of Hotel Business. Who can work without experience and skills is a maid or a janitor.
Such employees practically do not communicate with guests. In extreme cases, short dialogues on common topics are acceptable.
Studying the features of functioning of inns or hotels and management activities in such a structure is carried out by students who have chosen the specialty "Hotel and Restaurant Business". Who can work after graduation? Manager, administrator, human resources specialist or manager.
Responsibilities of a hotel service specialist
Mid-level managers assume the following responsibilities:
- Monitoring the work of staff.
- The wording of valuable instructions, the selection of their performers and monitoring the quality of work performed.
- Monitoring compliance with internal rules of the organization.
- Monitoring compliance with the necessary sanitary standards.
- Communication with customers, conflict resolution (within the scope of their competence).
In addition, a hotel service specialist can advise, instruct beginners and provide internships. His responsibilities often include conducting interviews with applicants for vacancies, as well as their selection.
An important task of a specialist manager is to monitor what mood is present in the team and its correction. A good employee knows how to analyze the situation in time, predict its development and optimize this process (resolution of internal conflicts, proper selection of personnel, application of incentive measures and penalties).
Many tricks from this list are taught in various educational institutions at the Hospitality Department (the student should decide before working for whom to work and what specialty).
Advantages of a Hotel Service Specialist
Choosing such a profession, people rely on the following privileges:
- Gaining experience in the field of management, which is useful not only for promotion in the hotel business, but also for work in many other structures.
- Such workers receive very decent wages. Ranking specialists are not supposed to tip, but their salary is several times higher than the official earnings of porters and maids.
- As a rule, conscientiously working as a hotel service specialist, you can expect a speedy increase.
Many young people do not think about the future profession, studying hotel business. They decide who to work with after gaining minimal experience, studying their capabilities and market requirements. That is, they perceive work in a hotel as a start for a career.
Disadvantages of the profession
The disadvantages characterizing this type of activity include the inevitably high nervous tension of senior employees, as well as the absence of a normalized working day.
Students wishing to work in this industry should carefully weigh all the nuances before studying hotel business. It is up to them to decide who to work with, but they must remember that this business is always working with people who have different temperaments, characters and a level of culture. Both among the guests and among the staff there may be impolite, upset, and even rude people. The specialist must be able to find a way out of various delicate or conflict situations in order to maintain the reputation of the institution and customer loyalty at the highest level.
Hotel business: whom to work and where to study?
Modern educational institutions offer two opportunities for obtaining education in this area:
- Graduation.
- Postgraduate.
The first is traditional study with a bachelor's degree at the end of the course. Postgraduate education can be used by young specialists or already held hotel workers who want to improve their skills. The result of such training is a master's degree.
Many domestic trade universities and specialized colleges offer to master the specialty “Hotel Business” (you can ask about the selection committee or study relevant publications). In addition, many educational institutions in Switzerland, France and Poland constantly invite applicants.
What is required for mastering the profession
I must say that not every person can be a hotel service specialist. To effectively carry out managerial functions and be useful for the organization by an employee, a student will need pragmatism, rational thinking skills, patience and certain leadership qualities.
At the moment, there is a certain bias in the labor market towards supply, that is, there are more young specialists than there are vacancies. However, this fact should not confuse ambitious and purposeful people, because with such qualities they have every chance of a successful career. In addition, the training program includes a large number of universal subjects that can be useful when working as a manager or personnel specialist in an organization that is far from the hotel business.
Knowing who to work with after completing the Hotel Business, young people must take into account the specifics of their future profession. Only in this way will training be interesting, and work will become a favorite pastime.