Hospitality Careers

In the environment where the clients are as diverse as the services you have to offer, a hospitality sales and services career is guaranteed to deliver variety and excitement every day. A career in the hospitality industry is a creative and challenging occupation, as you are enhancing someone’s life away from home.

The following are many of the exciting career opportunities within the hospitality industry:

• Hotels
  • Property
    • SalesThe hotel sales & marketing department is responsible for identifying customers with group business or volume accounts and booking their rooms, food and beverage and ancillary revenues into the hotel. The sales department is the heart of the hotel in that their business decisions affect all of the departments and is critical to the overall success of each individual hotel.
      • The different market segments include:
        • Corporate, Association, SMERF, Government, BTS, Leisure
      • The potential positions in sales include:
        • Sales Coordinator, Sales Manager, Senior Sales Manager, Assistant Director of Sales, Director of Sales & Marketing
    • Event Management
      • Banquets, Catering & Convention Services are responsible for the overall execution and success of each event within the hotel. From weddings and parties to large corporate meetings, this team plays an important role in the event planning and delivery of each event as well as the overall satisfaction of guests.
        • The potential positions in event management include:
          • Catering Sales Management, Convention Services Sales Management, Director of Catering and Convention Services
    • Revenue Management
      • Revenue Management is the force behind optimizing pricing and inventory based upon consumer demand and market conditions. That means, every day, the Revenue Management team is working hard to drive profitability by selling the right product, to the right customer, at the right price through the right sales channel within every area of the hotel – including rooms, food and beverage, meetings and more.
  • National Sales
    • Regional Offices or Global Offices for major hotel chains and brands.
      These roles offer an opportunity to represent an entire brand or group of hotels on an enterprise level. The sales and marketing efforts for a destination are responsible for identifying customers with group business or volume accounts and booking their rooms, food and beverage and ancillary revenues into the hotels within in the destination.
    • Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB)
      • Promotes a town, city, region, or country in order to increase the number of visitors. It promotes the development and marketing of a destination, focusing on convention sales, tourism marketing, and services. Such organizations promote economic development of a destination by increasing visits from tourists and business travelers, which generate overnight lodging for a destination, visits to restaurants, and shopping revenues. Convention and visitor bureaus are the most important tourism marketing organizations in their respective tourist destinations as they are directly responsible for marketing the destination brand through travel and tourism “product awareness” to visitors. DMOs produce billions of dollars in direct and indirect revenue and taxes for their destinations’ economies with their marketing and sales expertise.
    • Meeting Planner
      • Businesses or Associations may hire a meeting planner to coordinate meetings and conventions. These are usually small and large-scale events that require the meeting planner to arrange hotel accommodations, negotiate contracts, organize meals, travel, registration and activities for the attendees, etc. They will also arrange multimedia equipment and room setup and sometimes help put together collateral for attendees. This must all be done within a specified budget.
    • Independent Meeting Planner
      • Some organizations choose to outsource some or all of their meeting planning needs. These services can be provided by an independent meeting planner.
  • The advantages of working with an independent meeting planner is that they can offer the organization:
    • Industry Experience
    • The role trusted Advisor/Consultant
    • If needed, a manager of logistics
    • At any time, can bring in extra staff
    • State of the Art Technology
  • The advantages of being an independent meeting planner are:
    • Be Your own Boss
    • Have a Work/Life Balance
    • Ensure Job Security
    • Create Financial Security
    • Affiliating with a Brand vs. On Own:
      • Take business to next level with a big brand backing.
      • Able to work on production that may have previously surpassed the scope or was beyond capacity.
      • Do not have to spend time on templates, reports, websites, email server, accounting, etc.
      • Support of over 40 conference managers and director to assist in proposal writing.
      • Do not have to focus as much time on the administrative and business functions but can focus on production.

The choices available to all of us in the hospitality industry are unlimited. If you want to read articles about a career in the hospitality industry, please visit: www.hospitalitylifestyles.com