The distinctive dynamics of the hotel industry derive from the high capital requirements, the time between planning and opening a hotel, and the fact that a hotel is "brick and mortar" and cannot simply be moved if the destination or location falls from favor. Location is nearly everything in the hotel business.
The location will largely determine whether a hotel is geared to business or pleasure travelers and which time periods are busiest. Every hotel has the problem of leveling out peaks and valleys of occupancy, a task of the marketing department. A conference center such as Arrow wood of Rye Brook, NY, a full service hotel specializing in conferences and meetings, solves the problem by introducing summer vacation packages. A city-center hotel like Vista International in New York City, which caters to midweek business travelers, creates resort-type packages for the weekend. A resort like The Sagamore, which traditionally relied on summer travel, now cultivates incentive travel and meetings, spa programs, and family-activity packages to boost fall and winter travel.
Competition is intense in the hotel industry-and not just from other hotel properties. Only 44 percent of all trips involve commercial lodging, according to the U.S. Travel Data Center, the majority of travelers stay with friends and relatives, or at campgrounds, or in recreational vehicles and vacation homes.
Though demand has continued to increase for commercial lodgings, so has competition. Hotel companies have thus been forced to wage more aggressive marketing campaigns and to expand their sales and marketing forces.
Segmentation, or product differentiation, has also continued, as hotels have sought to expand their market share by offering new products from high-end accommodations to all suite hotels to a variety of new inns and motels. New specialized companies are springing up, and older established chains are diversifying more than ever before.
What the Hotel Business Offers
"This is such a dynamic, high energy business," commented L. Antoinette (Toni) Chance, former vice president of personnel for Omni/Dunfey Hotels and now an industry consultant.
"Opportunities in the hotel industry are unlimited," she said. There is no more exciting industry, or more opportunities available in any other industry in the country, including high tech. The variety of positions one can have, the flexibility, the freedom to test your wings in other areas with few restrictions, the high status of certain positions.
"I would be bored working for a widget manufacturer. The hotel industry offers a dynamic quality unlike any other. I can't see myself in any other business. I've seen people leave for a 9 to 5, weekends off job, but wind up coming back later. They miss the energy and excitement. Once you get into the hotel business, you're in it for life."
"Hotels are theater," stated Beier. 'In fact, a lot come to hotels with a theater background. You can live a lifestyle that you couldn't otherwise afford."
The lodging industry offers considerable glamour; the chance to mix and mingle with the powerful, successful, and rich, an opportunity for enormous responsibility at an early stage, and tremendous advancement prospects. Few industries offer as much chance to live and work virtually anywhere in the world. In fact, a career in the lodging industry almost necessitates frequent relocation. Each type of property and each location present their own challenge and distinct atmosphere.
"If you graduate from a hotel school or learn from the ground up," an industry executive observed, "the skills are equally as valuable in Seattle as Miami Beach or Bangkok. If you want to pull up stakes and move, you can. It's not like working in aerospace or in automobile manufacturing, where the key companies are concentrated in only a few places. Hotel skills are in demand everywhere, and if you like to travel and see new places, you can.
The lodging industry also offers a chance to do many different jobs in the course of a career, you are not pigeonholed in any one area. Indeed, wide experience is encouraged for anyone aspiring to a general manager's position.
The business is very much about people there is constant interaction with guests and coworkers and it is very literally a service business. 'It's a service business not servitude," stated Beier. "But Americans generally don't understand service."
The hotel industry remains very traditional and very hierarchical, much in keeping with its European heritage. A definite value is placed on "paying dues."
"Being a bellman or a front-desk receptionist is okay, but there is the nagging feeling that 1 should be doing more" said Beier. "But you have to systematically learn the business. No one doubts what a chef has to go through, the training in all the positions, but too many people in other positions in hospitality think, 'If I'm not the general manager within the year, I failed.'"
Though patience is a virtue, there is relatively fast progression toward accountability and the higher paying positions. "You can be accountable for millions of dollars by your mid-thirties," said the human resources vice president of a major chain. "There is power and responsibility at a relatively early age." Even with relatively little supervisory experience, within only two years, you can find yourself overseeing 40 people.
However, the fast track (known for rapid burnout rates) with frequent hops up the career ladder is no longer favored. "Companies want more stability," noted Dawn Penfold, formerly with ITT Sheraton and now an industry recruiter with Lerner Associates, New York. 'They want a sales staff to stay a minimum of three years. They don't want people who jump around."
What It Takes
The lodging industry demands dedication, sacrifice, and sheer hard work. Hotels do not shut down at 5 p.m. or even midnight, they are open 24 hours a day, weekends, and holidays. The work hours are very long: A group sales coordinator, for example, might have to be at the hotel at 3 a.m. on a Sunday to greet a group and stay until 8 p.m. to resolve a problem. Given the number of hours that mid and senior management positions require, the hourly rate is not very substantial. Moreover, there is no such thing as a totally protected holiday.
As a service business, the hospitality industry demands far more of employees than merely "liking people" and enjoying contact with them. "We're looking for people who have warm, outgoing personalities, who see a dignity in serving others and are not resentful of providing service," said a human resources executive.
Personnel people look for a take-charge person who wants accountability and autonomy early on yet can be a team player and is service and people oriented, flexible, adaptable, adventurous, hard-working, and self-disciplined. Since the work is physically demanding, they also look for energy and stamina.
"Everyone puts such emphasis on technical expertise," commented Jim France, former general manager of the Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA, in describing what he looks for when hiring.
"Technical expertise is the last thing you need. You can have the most brilliant hotel man, but if he can't handle people the staff or the guest-then he should be an auto mechanic."
"A hotel may have lovely appointments, but it is essentially brick and mortar. The only thing that makes one hotel better than another is the staff. I would fire an employee who is rude to a guest faster than one who makes a mistake. We can teach a person not to make a mistake, but rudeness to the customer destroys the business."
People looking for a career (not just a job) in the hotel business should be willing and able to physically move about frequently and be interested in doing so. (France's own career proves the point: In 20 years in the business, he moved 13 times.) However, the need to uproot family, leave friends, and relocate frequently in order to rise up the career ladder can strain relationships.
The hotel environment can be extremely disciplined, if not autocratic. Front-desk clerks, bell persons, and waiters, for example, are drilled in techniques; their movements are choreographed, their remarks rehearsed. The Charles Hotel in Cambridge even has an operating manual 84 pages long, describing every detail about what to say to guests, how to present restaurant checks to patrons, and what the menu will be like. At the same time, as one general manager noted, a hotel must operate democratically, involving individuals in the operation.
"We don't want automatons' added Chance. "We want to see 'scenarios' but we don't inhibit personal style."
What to Go in For
Work environments, advancement potential and even job categories differ greatly in the hotel field depending upon whether the property is a city-center hotel, a highway motel, a vacation resort, a conference center, or a country inn; whether it is full service or economy class and whether it is a chain or an independent property.
There are eight major categories of function. Depending upon the size of the property, functions can be separate jobs or combined into one.
Front-Office Staff is Responsible for direct personal contact with the guests, reservations, special needs, check-in, and check-out. Positions include front-office manager, assistant manager, room clerk, reservation clerk, cashier, information clerk, and telephone operator.
Service Staff. Responsible for greeting guests, handling baggage, and assisting with travel plans. Positions include superintendent of service, concierge, lobby porter, bell captain, bell person, and doorperson.
Accounting. Responsible for tracking financial information. Positions include controller, assistant controller, credit manager, purchasing agent, food/beverage controller, income auditor, food/beverage auditor, general cashier, cashier, accounts payable supervisor, accounts receivable supervisor, payroll supervisor, night auditor, ADP systems supervisor, and secretary. The controller can play a key role as a financial advisor along with the general manager and professional staff; the assistant controller serves as office manager.
Food Service. Positions include food/beverage director, catering manager, maitre d'hotel, captain, waiter/waitress, bus person, bartender, wine server, food checker, and dietician.
For example: a food/beverage manager, for a hotel that generates $10 million in annual volume is responsible for keeping costs down by controlling inventory and obtaining better prices (as well as for serving as the liaison between the company and outside contractors and unions, determining how to upgrade restaurant operations, achieving "harmony" of the staff, planning work schedules, overseeing accounts payable and receivable) and is ultimately responsible for profit and loss.
Food Preparation. Positions include executive chef, first assistant, second cook, fry cook, roast cook, grade manager, vegetable cook, pastry chef, butcher, pastry supervisor, and steward.
Housekeeping. Positions include executive housekeeper, floor supervisor, room attendant, serving specialist, and house person.
Sales and Marketing. Responsible for promotions, special arrangements for events such as meetings, banquets, and weddings, sales to the travel trade (travel agents, tour operators, car rental companies, and airlines), rate setting; and decision making regarding products and services. Positions include marketing director, sales director, sales representative, group sales coordinator, banquet manager, and food service staff coordinator.
Maintenance and Operations. This area has been greatly elevated in status since the energy crisis of 1973, which saw energy and maintenance costs of hotels skyrocket. Positions include chief engineer, air conditioning engineer, plumber, carpenter, electrician, and laundry and kitchen equipment service representatives. The director of engineering does not necessarily have to have a degree in engineering; rather, this position requires experience in building maintenance and equipment. The director of engineering usually supervises five or six people and maintains a $ 50-million building.
