Hotels and motels are not only places to obtain great food and comfortable rooms; they are also the guts of community life, with facilities for reaching, entertainment, communication and personal service. Their stock in trade has always been hospitality and service, and hotel and motel have made a skill of dispensing comfort, satisfying the palate and creating an atmosphere of home for guests.
As considerably as job opportunities are concerned, in United States by themselves, the hospitality industry is one of the largest of all industries, surpassed only by the motor vehicle and food industry. Wage and salary opportunities in hotel and other accommodations is expected to increase by 17 percent through 2012, compared with 16 percent progress projected for any industries mixed.
Dr. Robert A. Beck, former dean of the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, and an eminent specialist, describes the obstacles and opportunities of the Hotel industry.
"The hospitality industry offers today's teenagers and young women a most interesting and fascinating career. Management of an hotel or a restaurant demands a variety of capabilities. Friends must be received with cordiality and given comfortable, well-designed, and tastefully decorated area. They need appetizing, wholesome food that is smartly bought, properly stored, skillfully prepared, and graciously served. Many other conveniences in public areas areas, seminar and show rooms, communication systems, and travel systems are necessary for proper guest service. Further, a staff of employees must be recruited, trained, and stimulated to provide hospitable service. Additionally, all must be successfully coordinated to return a earnings to the establishment's shareholders. For those wishing a rewarding and challenging life in service to their fellow man, a future in the hospitality field should certainly be considered. "
SKILLS AND PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:
Social Skills:
At the core of this occupation is service and hospitality, so people need to take pleasure from dealing with people and assisting to teach, advise and amuse them. Public skills generally include speaking with people and making them feel relaxed along. If the person does not have excellent public skills, then it will be very hard for him to survive in the service industry. A guest would never like to stay at a hotel where in fact the personnel is stiff and unfriendly no matter how beautiful and comfortable the hotel is.
respectful, patient and tolerant:
Graciousness is one of the main element personal skills needed in the service industry. Sometimes, the customer will truly test your patience but at times like this one must be polite with irritable, short-tempered customers. It's important to remember never to quarrel with the customer as he's the reason for your breads and butter. The most basic quality in a manager is for him to be respectful to others. Satisfaction is the most treasured thing to the people and when the manager needs that from his employees, they'll never trust him again. Which will make extracting work from them very difficult. A manager's job is to make certain that the employees are learning, growing and performing to their extreme potential and that can only be performed through a relationship of shared trust and kindness.
Leadership skills:
The most important job of an leader is to aid the employees and his team into providing their best efforts for the organizational goal. Market leaders inspire others to do something by setting a good example. They drive and perseverance spurs others on. A leader's responsibilities are numerous. He must encourage others, be able to give negative and positive opinions, organize and entrust tasks and obligations, solve problems and make decisions and monitor the team's improvement and preparing goals for himself and his team.
Business skills:
Business skills are important for any staff in the hotel industry. He must have sound understanding of the profitability aspect of his hotel. He should be completely alert to the organizations goals and the strategies developed to accomplish those goals. He should know sources and methods of the money and management of the resources. Business skills likewise incorporate human resource management and delegating work and resources.
Valuing diversity:
To use an assortment of individual cultures at one place is tough. Especially in this point in time of competition, in case a company recognizes and respects personality, then it can maintain a proper advantage over others. These ethnical differences, if been able positively can foster creativity, better decision making, higher performance and competitive advantages. In the hotel industry, one is continually meeting people from different cultures, backgrounds and language. It is vital never to only understand but also value folks from diverse societies and locations. A person can understand more about culturally differing people by travelling round the world and interacting with such people. Besides that, reading can also train a person much about different customs and traditions. It's important that the friends feel right at home when they visit your hotel and the only path to achieve that is to help make the environment as near to their own environment as possible.
Ingenuity and thoughts:
Since the hotel industry is a highly competitive industry, the client must not only have a good but a wonderful experience to gain his loyalty. For this, employees in the hotel industry must add originality, imagination and imagination in their service. It is also essential they are also given enough resources and authority by their employers in their responsibilities to completely gratify the customer.
Inventory management skills:
Inventory management skills include purchasing, stock control and merchandise screen. Inventory management skills contain proper planning strategy of the stock and products to be purchased, how they'll be carried to the destination, where they will be stored, when will the new stock be ordered and exactly how long does it try be delivered. Because the hotel industry is highly competitive and premium is an essential part of the hotel industry, it is vital that the meals served is actually fresh, cooked well and effectively presented. Along with this, it's important for the person handling the inventory to be a good negotiator so that he may get maximum power out of the price paid for the source.
Negotiator:
Negotiation is getting the favor of folks from whom we want things such as money, justice, status and acceptance. Both specialized and non-technical people need negotiating skills to acquire help from and support of fellow workers', supervisors, peers, customers, suppliers and even relatives and buddies. Inside the hotel industry an example may be frequent negotiating with customers, colleagues, and suppliers and must be quite competent at it.
Technical Skills:
Technical skills imply to be able to understand and aptitude to operate the techniques, equipments and methods used in the organization. These skills are important in all fields of job whether its funding, engineering or manufacturing. Rodney Mott, flower administrator at Nucor Corp. 's new Hickman, Arkansas, metal mill, needed technical skills to decide on the installation of a fresh $50 million caster, which changes liquid metal into bands of metal. The move practically doubled the Hickman vegetation capacity, to 36000 lots a week. Complex skills are specifically important al lower organizational levels. It is very difficult for a supervisor to survive in the business world if he does not possess adequate technological skills. His initial escalation in the corporation depends on his technical skills. But for the top management of the company, the technological skills aren't as important as the conceptual skills are. Even in the hotel industry, technical skills are very important as you will constantly be using or supervising use of new systems and equipments and needs to be a specialist at it.
Active Listener:
Active hearing is one of the most powerful personal and management tools. It consists of more than simply hearing. It includes your forces of observation as well. Watching body gestures is also an integral part of active listening normally the words completely contradict your body language. It's the process of taking action to help someone say just what he or she really means and then making use of that information to the best possible way. Inside the service industry, productive listening is extremely important as it determines the efficiency and the potency of the service sent to the clients.
SAMPLE CV:
Objective: to get the position of an hotel administrator in a reputed hotel to be able to work with all my competence and proficiency in this field towards development of the hotel business.
Knowledge:
Proficiency in MS Gain access to, MS Excel, MS Electric power Point etc.
Proficiency in SQL.
Professional Skills:
Capable of retaining customers reservations and creating customer databases
Excellent oral and written communication
Able to complete tasks within deadline.
Able to work and escort teams
Capable in managing phone calls and e-mail of customers.
Capable of handling customers' grievances and inquiries.
Able to organize big and small incidents.
Educational Qualifications:
Bachelors in Hotel Management from Boston University in 1997.
Job Experience:
Worked as a assistant - forward office in ABC Hotel - from 2005 to 2007
Worked as a hotel supervisor - XYZ Hotel - from 2007 till particular date.
Summary:
Handled customers questions and claims via calls, emails and fax etc
Handled inventory management
Monitored and overseen all employees' responsibilities.
Administered complete hotel operations
SKILLS AUDIT:
Social Skills:
I believe I've good cultural skills since I love interacting with people and learning them. I've a friendly personality credited to which people find it easy to talk to me. They are in ease with me. Often, I have also been the entertainer of my peer group and among friends. I also have confidence in aiding people out without wanting any reward in return. In university I am an integral part of several societies so I am constantly meeting new people and dealing with them.
respectful, patient and tolerant:
Since childhood I have already been a part of several community services. The knowledge there has taught me how to be patient, tolerant and respectful towards people. Frequently, we come across people who prove to be quite difficult and dealing with them could be very challenging, but I've learned very early that politeness can turn any frown into a smile and I apply the same guideline in my life.
Leadership skills:
I have often directed groups and clubs in several societies as I'm very actively social in my community as well as am an integral part of a few societies at the school. The most recent experience is leading a group of people who have been chosen to prepare an comprehensive business plan on a fresh business initiated. Here we had to go to several organizations and folks, accumulate relevant market information, do research and develop a complete business plan that made up of the marketing and advertising plan too. To be a leader I got after myself to delegate responsibilities to the group users, give them deadline for the duty, supervise their work and performance and motivate them to work towards the goal.
Business skills:
Having courses of business studies has taught me a lot of what sort of business should be conducted effectively. But I really do assume that business management is an art that can't be excelled at until one gets practical experience in the same.
Valuing diversity:
Since I am a part of several societies, interacting with people from different cultures and diverse backgrounds is quite common. The challenge I face here's understanding their traditions and practices and respecting them. Some words of activities that are quite respectful here may end up being quite offensive to them. So one needs to be quite careful while dealing with them. One advantage of working with folks from diverse backgrounds is the era of new and unique ideas that a person is released to. These dissimilarities managed favorably can foster creativeness, better decision making, higher performance and competitive edge.
Inventory management skills:
This summer I had developed an internship at a local motel where I was supporting in inventory management. My daily tasks consisted of literally keeping track of and keeping documents of the stock and place order when the products were near their last phases. I also had to make certain that the resources I bought were delivered promptly and make a be sure the delivered products were fresh. I could handle the work successfully and it provided me a great experience in the world of inventory management.
Technical Skills:
I believe I really do not need the best complex skills at that time as these are skills that are polished with time and experience. But I really do possess effectiveness in using the Microsoft Office and can read make information and financial assertions and interpret them. With time, I believe I shall become more adept in complex skills.
Active Listener:
I use dynamic tuning in skills every day while interacting with my classmates, friends and even family. By carefully watching their body gestures and duplicating important words of what they say, I make sure that I understand precisely what they want to communicate if you ask me to avoid any misunderstandings. Productive listening is an essential skill that pays to in all aspects of life whether it's college or university life, family life or work life.
REFLECTIVE LEARNING:
This module has been very helpful for me personally in terms of personal development. A few of the skills that I think I must learn/posses are the following:
People's person:
One thing I've learned is that one needs to be considered a people's person. The primary task of an supervisor is to interact with people. These folks can be his own organizations employees, his team and staff and it can be persons from outside the organization that is the dealer, customers or outsourced people. Since every person has an alternative personality and outlook towards things, the manager must be adaptable enough to change based on the situation that requires him to be. Only then can he be a good negotiator and can get things down the way he would like it.
Become accomplishment/results oriented:
To survive in the professional world, one must become achievement/results oriented. This includes the aspiration to receive the assigned tasks completed proficiently and effectively. An accomplishment oriented director must constantly struggle himself with new duties and assignments and established and must surpass his benchmark to be the best. But becoming accomplishment oriented is not easy. This involves proper and strenuous planning and foreseeing all future obstacles and finding ways to meet them.
Assertiveness:
Assertiveness means standing up for your own rights so you don't violate others person's privileges. Here, you are expressing your needs, wants, and ideas, feelings in beliefs in a direct, genuine and appropriate manner. Behaving assertively sets you in a position of being in a position to impact people properly and respond to them favorably.
Business awareness:
It is really important to have business recognition if the director wishes to expand professionally. The manager must constantly look for home based business opportunities and must exploit them whenever he is able to. He must have a clear notion of what his organizations overall goals are and what steps the organization is taking to attain them. Only then can his group and he himself can go up in the business world.
Excellent communication skills:
Communication can be an essential tool in the professional life no matter which industry or sector you participate in. The ability to speak well, orally and in writing goes quite a distance. The communication skills likewise incorporate observing the non-verbal communication. It means listening to the words that are being said but also use other signs that communicate its meaning. Several things clue the non verbal communication, for example, the shape of the eyes, the muscles of the face, even pose.
Collaboration:
Collaborating is the work platform of the 21st century. It is the epitome of the "we" office, where extending demand and excellent service to fellow employees is the building blocks of all interactions. Collaboration takes good thing about the most effective actions possible because it targets and utilizes the unique gifts and strengths of the many. Everyone's skills supplement and reinforce one another's. Collaboration creates and energy that inspires and motivates. Through collaboration, people gain a more powerful understanding for how their attempts align, add value, and produce results for the company. One more point about collaboration is essential. Savvy managers know that collaboration requires employees to be a part of something bigger than themselves - a job with interpretation and importance. Compared to that end, they artfully help employees relinquish ego actions, changing them with mutually beneficial ones. They respond consciously to ensure that every person is aware how much his or her contribution adds to the project's success. As companies proceed to more virtual projects executed globally, utilizing a host of virtual communication technologies, collaboration challenges with depth. Building your cooperation skills gives you to handle disparate work distributed across various civilizations and times areas and to transcend various boundaries. It becomes your strategy for bringing out the best in each person.
Working under unpredictable circumstances:
Work is often unpredictable. Situations and circumstances change and scheduled compared to that the pressure of the job increases. The best laid plans are therefore disrupted and the established priorities are discontinued. In these circumstances, one must have the ability to handle such circumstances and make quick decisions as they occur.
Periodic Trainings:
Periodic trainings are incredibly important to keep the employees up to date with the existing systems and styles. Many institutions are actually offering trainings to their business executives as a way of producing skills. These trainings prove to be very useful in initiating and promoting entrepreneurship. Trainings must get sound knowledge of technical and non-technical skills. International trainings are also a good forum for the director to build new personal relationships and interact with new people.
Analyze past errors and note down learning tips:
One way to learn from past faults is to analyze the past. Ask yourself what went incorrect. What have I learnt from it? How can I increase the situation? Even though one does not achieve a certain goal, rather than being discouraged he should jot down details of what he has learned from the situation and if he previously to face an identical situation again, what would he do differently next time. Self-analysis is an effective learning method.
Interacting with people from different ethnicities and conditions:
To further broaden one's horizon, one constantly must interact with folks from different conditions are civilizations. This allows us to learn about the different ethnic dynamics and forget about our preconceived notions. In this manner one also learns to work with that cultural diversity to the organization's gain. Whenever a group of men and women from different cultures get together originality and creative imagination is introduced. In the current day and age, where cities have become more and more metropolitan, it is important to be able to interact with and respect folks from different places and appreciate their difference.
personal development plan:
What do I need to learn?
Develop complex skills pertaining to my professional life.
How have I established such need?
I have come to know that I am nearly as experienced in technical skills and they're an essential requirement of the kind of profession I wish to pursue.
What is the aim of my learning?
I try to be proficient at technical skills.
What will be the specific objectives I have to achieve?
Demonstrate proof improvement in these skills.
How am i going to accomplish my objectives?
I intend to take lessons in new systems and software that are being used in the business world nowadays. I will also read about the new systems and softwares, their goal and contribution in the entire organizations goals.
What is my timescale?
On-going. I intend to keep exercising and learning new systems and smooth wares to keep myself proficient.
