Hospitality careers can be ideal for people with a wide range of different skills, qualifications, and experiences, and there will often be excellent scope to move up the career ladder. However, having a rounded understanding of the industry is important, and this post will provide you with an overview of the various available hospitality positions.
Quick menu:
- Hospitality Industry; Brief Introduction to the Hospitality Industry
- Hospitality Careers: Overview of All Hospitality Positions
- Video: Working in Hospitality
- Hospitality Management: The Essentials About Hospitality
- Hospitality Management Careers Advice
- The Best Channels for Finding Hospitality Jobs
- Job Boards for Finding Hospitality Manager Vacancies
- Hotel Chains Offering Hospitality Management Jobs
- Help Finding Your Next Hotel Manager Position
Hospitality Industry; Brief Introduction to the Hospitality Industry
The hospitality sector forms part of the wider service industry and covers a number of key areas, including accommodation, food and drinks, and parts of the travel and tourism industry. For example, hotels, bed and breakfasts, motels, restaurants, bars, clubs, tour operators, and travel agents all fall under the hospitality umbrella.
Read the “Hospitality Industry: The No. 1 Hospitality Information Guide!” article to gain further insight into the industry, the various businesses included within it, and some of the latest trends.
Hospitality Careers: Overview of All Hospitality Positions
There are various hospitality careers covering different parts of the hospitality industry. Below, you will find an overview of the key positions, including catering, nightlife, and hotel jobs.
Food & Beverage Positions
The food and beverage sector is focused on providing paying customers with food and drinks. This covers various settings, including restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, bars, clubs, and catering services.
Waiting Staff
Waiting staff provide services within restaurants and similar settings and are a good example of an entry-level hospitality career. Typical responsibilities will include taking orders, serving food, collecting plates and cutlery, communicating restaurant policy to customers, taking payments, and catering for any requests customers make.
Bartender
A bartender, also known as a barkeep, is an employee who works in a bar, pub, or similar establishment, serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Responsibilities include taking customer orders, preparing drinks, serving drinks, and sometimes serving food. A bartender will also need to collect payments and make recommendations.
Restaurant Manager
A restaurant manager takes overall responsibility for restaurant operations, often with a particular focus on the customer-facing aspects of the business. The role may involve creating and maintaining reports, hiring and firing staff, supervising restaurant service periods, providing relevant training, and dealing with serious complaints.
Kitchen Staff
Many people embarking on hospitality careers enter the door as a kitchen staff member. This role can involve various tasks within the kitchen, including washing dishes and cutlery, basic cooking or food preparation, organizing and setting tables, and assisting chefs or cooks.
Kitchen Manager
A kitchen manager takes responsibility for managing the kitchen staff and overseeing operations. Tasks will include hiring and training new employees, supervising kitchen staff while they work, managing departmental budgets and stock levels, and managing work rotors, in order to ensure the kitchen is never under-staffed or over-staffed.
Head Chef
The head chef is the main chef in a restaurant and will usually have additional responsibilities, such as creating and implementing the restaurant menu, ordering stock, and supervising other chefs. Often, it is the hospitality career choice of chefs with managerial aspirations or a desire to demonstrate their creativity fully.
Room Service
An example of a food and beverage-related hospitality career that is based in hotels, room service staff are responsible for taking orders from guests, communicating orders to restaurant or catering staff, and then delivering those orders to guests’ hotel rooms. It is a position that combines elements of waiting and customer service.
Front Office Positions
The front office is the main customer-facing section of a business, meaning hospitality careers in this category strongly emphasize communication and customer service skills. Front-office hospitality positions tend to be centered around the reception or waiting area, and people working in these roles are often the first point of contact.
Porter
The job of a hotel porter involves greeting guests upon arrival and helping them to carry their luggage to their hotel room. It is a customer-facing role, where communication skills can be crucial, and it can also be an active hospitality career due to the amount of movement and lifting involved. A porter may also need to answer customer questions.
Front Desk Employee
A front desk employee will work in the reception or main area for customer contact. Typical responsibilities will include welcoming guests or customers, confirming reservations, checking guests or visitors in and out, collecting payments, answering customer questions, and answering telephone calls.
Front Desk Manager
A front desk manager will take responsibility for the day-to-day performance of the front desk, supervising and coordinating front desk staff, hiring new employees, providing training, reporting on performance, and making necessary adjustments to the approach. A key part of the role involves ensuring the front desk is always adequately staffed.
Maintenance & Cleaning Positions
Hospitality careers related to maintenance and cleaning are primarily concerned with keeping hospitality businesses in working order or helping guests access essential services.
Concierge Staff
Sometimes seen as a potential area of progression for those who started their hospitality careers as room service staff or hotel porters, a concierge will help to connect guests with the services they need. For instance, they may be required to organize a clean room, book a taxi, book a restaurant table, or purchase event tickets for a guest.
Housekeeping Employee
Hotels and similar properties employ housekeeping staff to keep guest rooms and other areas clean and tidy. Typical responsibilities will include cleaning rooms, making rooms look presentable to new guests, washing bed linen, towels, and other items, replacing toiletries, and vacuuming other parts of the premises.
Housekeeping Manager
The natural hospitality career progression route for those working as housekeeping staff, a housekeeping manager oversees the housekeeping department and is likely to be responsible for coordinating efforts, managing stock, hiring and training employees, creating work schedules, and potentially dealing with certain customer complaints.
Management & Headquarters Positions
As people advance in their hospitality careers, they may find themselves in a management or headquarters-based role. These tend to be managerial positions, often requiring individuals to work in an office. However, some elements of customer interaction and supervision of the main workforce may also be involved.
General Manager
The general manager position is often the pinnacle of a hospitality career and involves taking overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of the hospitality business. Tasks may include managing and setting budgets, completing administrative work, and supervising the various aspects of the business, including dealing with customers.
Marketing Manager
A marketing manager is in charge of promotional efforts for the hospitality business. Regardless of whether it is a hotel, restaurant, bar, or cafe, the marketing manager will devise marketing strategies, manage and coordinate marketing staff, oversee social media activities, take responsibility for branding, and measure advertising performance.
Sales Manager
Sales is a specialized hospitality career path, and a sales manager oversees sales strategy and attempts to sell specific products or services. Within a hotel, for example, a sales manager may communicate with business leaders, attend exhibitions or trade shows, and attempt to sell hotel rooms, business facilities, weddings, and other services.
Revenue Manager
The job of a revenue manager is to optimize financial results. It is one of the most data-driven hospitality careers, with the revenue manager using past performance, forecasting models, industry trends, and other information to make strategic pricing and distribution decisions to optimize revenue generation.
Accounting Manager
The accounting manager takes on the task of ensuring a hospitality industry business is recording financial information properly. This means keeping track of all income and expenses and ensuring bills and taxes are paid on time. In addition, they will lead the finance department and ensure employees are paid on time.
Purchase Manager
Some businesses employ a dedicated purchase manager, who oversees most purchases the company makes. Key responsibilities within this role include continuously monitoring stock levels and use of equipment, making purchases for the best price at the right time, and avoiding situations where the business is over or under-stocked.
Human Resource Manager
An HR manager will focus their efforts on the effective management of people. Much of the role involves creating policies and processes that keep employees safe, supported, protected, and happy. This could mean dealing with disputes, providing performance appraisals, managing employee benefits, and strategically managing staff turnover.
IT Manager
As the head of the IT department, the IT manager is tasked with managing the business’ IT resources. This may involve designing and implementing IT infrastructure, hiring, training, and supervising IT workers, keeping hardware and software up-to-date, providing technical support, and ensuring the business complies with data protection laws.
Video: Working in Hospitality
In this video, a teacher and various students explain what it is like to have a career in hospitality.
Hospitality Management: The Essentials About Hospitality
Hospitality management can be broadly defined as the management of hospitality services and the customer journey. This often means overseeing operational, administrative, and commercial tasks. However, the precise objectives and responsibilities can vary with so many different sectors, businesses, and hospitality career paths.
Read the “Hospitality Management: The Essentials About Hospitality” article to learn more about what hospitality management is, the responsibilities of a hospitality manager, the importance and value of hospitality management qualifications, and some of the latest hospitality industry trends you will need to be aware of.
Hospitality Management Careers Advice
For many people embarking on long-term hospitality careers, the end goal is to get a job within the field of hospitality management. However, given this fact, the field can be extremely competitive, with many people applying for these job vacancies. For this reason, taking steps to gain an edge over the competition is crucial.
Our article, “Hospitality Management Careers Advice”, provides several helpful tips to help you secure a job within hospitality management, with specific advice on creating the ideal CV, acquiring the right qualifications, and searching for jobs via the right channels.
The Best Channels for Finding Hospitality Jobs
With so many different hospitality careers to choose from, actually finding the right job can be a challenge, and this is made harder because different companies use different platforms to advertise vacancies. With this in mind, it is important to turn to multiple channels while searching for the ideal hospitality job.
Check out “The Best Channels for Finding Hospitality Jobs” for more information on the different channels that can aid you with your job search, including hospitality industry job boards, social media platforms, recruitment agencies, and methods for applying to businesses directly.
Job Boards for Finding Hospitality Manager Vacancies
Job boards represent one of the most important channels for those pursuing managerial hospitality careers. Many hotels, restaurants, cafes, clubs, or bed and breakfasts will turn to dedicated hospitality job boards to advertise vacancies. These services also allow you to apply online and access additional resources.
In “Job Boards for Finding Hospitality Manager Vacancies”, you can find a list of some of the most popular job boards centered on the hospitality industry, which can make it significantly easier for you to find and apply for the hospitality manager job you have always wanted.
Hotel Chains Offering Hospitality Management Jobs
Applying directly can often be the best way for anyone seeking hospitality management jobs or other senior hospitality careers. After all, some of these positions may not be advertised on the channels you usually use to find job vacancies, and applying directly also allows you to find the hotel chains that best suit your preferences and values.
By reading our “Hotel Chains Offering Hospitality Management Jobs” article, you will have access to a list of some of the most popular hotel chains, making it easier to apply for a hospitality management job directly.
Help Finding Your Next Hotel Manager Position
Hotel manager positions are highly sought after by those pursuing hospitality careers, which means you can expect significant competition along the way. Furthermore, employers tend to set the bar high regarding skills, qualifications, and experience, so you must give yourself the best possible chance of success.
Read “Help Finding Your Next Hotel Manager Position,” and you will be able to find a number of essential tips on how to make yourself an attractive candidate for the hotel management jobs you apply for.
The hospitality industry is diverse, so there is great variety in the types of hospitality careers available. Understanding the different positions, how they fit in within the industry, and the duties and responsibilities makes it easier to make an informed decision about the jobs you wish to apply for.
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