There is a vast variety of potential career paths for someone with a hospitality management degree. And you can add to this a number of industry niches and opportunities of other fields as well with an educational background in the subject. A fantastic advantage of getting into the hospitality industry is that not only is it kind of like a variety of industries all rolled into one, but it provides a network of advancement opportunities in all kinds of directions both within different job and career types and in locations worldwide as well.
My experience
On a personal note, I myself worked for over a decade in the hospitality management field. I started in food and beverage while still in college and moved into hotel work later where I moved from a low level supervisor in operations up to the director of finance within a mid-sized metropolitan full-service hotel in just a few years. This example hopefully provides you with an idea of the range and scope of opportunities within the industry for someone who is willing to work hard and remain open to a number of career options and paths moving forward.
This point illustrates two of the great things about work within hospitality. First off, there can be a variety of interesting career advancement paths and opportunities. Second, such advancement opportunities can come in a relatively quick timeframe and allow someone who is motivated to succeed within the field to advance their career quite rapidly.
Starting off in a role in a larger operation
For larger operations, work within an accounting or finance office might work, moving up through the ranks from a receivables or payables supervisor to assistant department head and eventually to department director. Otherwise, working in sales as a sales manager or sales associate could be the path to an interesting and lucrative role as a director of sales. If operations is more your thing, you might begin as a housekeeping floor manager or supervisor, facilities manager or engineering/property operations supervisor or manager with aspirations of one day moving up to department director. And if food and beverage is an area of interest, working as a supervisor or manager within a restaurant, catering department or banquet department could all lead to eventual department head positions.
Department director, corporate office or another route altogether
After reaching the department director level, there can be a number of next steps on the ladder of your career advancement. If you enjoy working at the property level, you might find that work as an assistant general manager or general manager could be the right step. As an assistant general manager, you could be overseeing multiple areas of the property, managing several different department heads. And as a general manager, you could take responsibility for your own property, ensuring the management of finances and daily operations of the property as well as planning for the future through revenue forecasting and looking for possible improvements to the property or operations.
Otherwise, it might be off to the corporate office to try your hand at work there. This could be work in a more subdued environment, or you could find yourself traveling to a variety of locations to help with training or doing quality assurance for individual properties. From this point, it may be that you move on to become an area vice president in which you oversee the operations of several properties, and from there you might even advance to a regional vice president position, overseeing possibly dozens of properties. Or you might decide to try your hand as an entrepreneur, using your hospitality education and experience to become a small business owner and open your own property.
Having a background upon which to base your small business experience could allow you to mold your property into the sort of place you always wanted to work but never did. You may find a niche that has yet to be filled and work to create a property that caters to a particular customer base or open one that appeals to the masses, but in either case, one at which you run the show!
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Disclaimer:
The author is not a licensed educational professional or academic advisor. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute advice of any kind. Any action taken by the reader due to the information provided in this article is solely at the reader’s discretion.