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General Description

This is an ideal career for visionary thinkers. A hotel manager plans, supervises and controls personnel, finances, operations, and marketing activities of hotels and motels.

What you do every day?

During a standard working day, your tasks will be broad and varied, depending on the size of the establishment and the time of year. You manage financial accounts, action marketing plans, monitor guest services, ensure delivery of high quality food and beverages, motivate staff to feel part of a team, solve problems, ‘fight fires’ and take overall responsibility for the level of customer satisfaction and ongoing retention of them as a returning guest. The buck stops with you.

You allocate tasks, organise resources, and create business and financial plans. You establish operating procedures to ensure sustainable delivery of products and services to your customers. You also set up reporting procedures so information flows to you in order to improve service delivery. Cost containment, property inspections, supplier and contractor negotiations, and compliance with government health, safety, licensing and environmental regulations all round out the wide gambit of your responsibilities.

Above all you must never be far away from customer contact, to ensure you remain in touch with their experience.

Personality that best fits this occupation

Hotel managers need to excel at business, administration, and have a strong ability for project and people management. The position can be high stress and customer expectations are also high, so you will need to have a well-developed sense of managerial responsibility, with an aptitude for problem solving and time management. 

You must have strong communication skills, since the job involves meeting your customers’ expectations and objectives, as well as dealing with a range of suppliers, staff, marketers, and so on.

You will also need to be able to remain calm under pressure, and have qualities such as organisation, observation, judgment, confidence, an eye for detail, and the ability to work with others. You will need to be able to handle any emergency, and be willing to work at any time of the day or night. You are naturally a visionary thinker.

Best thing about this career

Hotel managers are responsible for the overall presentation and function of a hotel. This is a position of responsibility and an important managerial role. Although it is hard work, you are rewarded with a sense of satisfaction when customers become regulars, your occupancy rate remains high, corporations approach you for preferred rates, you have low staff turnover and all this translates to a profitable, successful and well-presented establishment.

The job is diverse, with a range of tasks to manage and responsibilities to attend to each day. With all of the things to constantly organise, you’ll never get bored!

Worst thing about this career

You may work in busy, high pressure and stressful conditions. Hotel management can be demanding and hectic, with daily problem solving and ‘fire fighting’. Customers can be difficult to manage and you may have to deal with criticism and abuse. With the increasing standard of hotels, there is no detail too small. Everything must be perfect.

Working late into the night, and on weekends and public holidays is common, and this can be difficult if you wish to spend time with your family on a regular, daily basis. In recessionary times with less corporate travel, the pressure on occupancy rates and profitability intensifies.