What can you do with a degree in international hospitality management?

Sponsored by Institut Paul Bocuse

From hotel, catering and events management to operations, marketing and business development, a degree in international hospitality management can equip you with the skills and knowledge for a rewarding and successful career.

At Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France, many of its Bachelor’s in International Hospitality Management graduates have gone on to enjoy exciting management careers in a range of fields. Here are just some of them… 

Hotel manager

Specific roles and responsibilities of hotel managers can vary according to the size of the hotel. However, most typical duties as a hotel manager include:

• Being responsible for the planning, organising and smooth-running of all hotel services, including accommodation, catering, events and conferences
• Ensuring guests have a positive experience and pleasant stay
   

There is a lot of responsibility and hard work involved in hotel management – but it’s considered to be an extremely rewarding career.

Key skills
Being a hotel manager requires:

• Excellent people and time management skills
• Interpersonal and communication skills are especially important when it comes to client interactions and customer service
• Language skills can also come in useful if you work in a hotel where guests come to stay from all over the world
• Depending on the size of the hotel, numeracy skills may be desirable for hotel managers who have more office-based and finance-related roles

Guest relations manager

Guest relation managers work closely with the hotel manager and are the main point of contact for guests. A guest relations manager’s typical roles and responsibilities include:

• Offering warm welcomes to guests and delivering a flawless and memorable experience for them
• Overseeing and coordinating the check in and departures of guests
• Providing assistance to guests throughout their stay including offering information about local amenities and hotel services
• Being willing to go the extra mile to ensure guests are satisfied and comfortable
• Having a positive attitude when dealing with difficult situations
• Addressing guests’ requests and complaints promptly and following up to ensure they have been resolved
• Regularly reviewing guest feedback in order to improve services, facilities and business strategies
   

Key skills
Guest relations managers need a healthy mix of hard and soft skills, such as:

• Good working knowledge of hospitality management best practices and regulations
• Excellent communication, problem-solving and multitasking skills
• The ability to lead and motivate your team is essential
• Being reliable and resilient

Business development manager

A hotel business development manager’s primary job is to improve and grow the business. Their main duties involve:

• Identifying, targeting and developing strategic business growth opportunities
• Maximising the hotel’s revenue
• Establishing and forging long-term relationships with the hotel’s suppliers, partners and clients
• Working collaboratively with every department and team in the hotel to ensure an integrated approach towards delivery of a high-quality service for guests

Key skills
Business development managers need:

• Strong commercial awareness, business acumen and knowledge of current industry trends
• Excellent strategic-thinking, negotiation, communication, and numeracy skills
• Flair for thinking outside the box and coming up with innovative solutions

Revenue manager

Revenue mangers work behind the scenes to help drive the hotel’s business plan and maximise its revenue. Their main roles and responsibilities include:

• Developing and implementing pricing strategies including rates for rooms and packages as well as determining discounts and specialty rates while anticipating and spotting peaks and troughs in the market
• Evaluating trends in the economy and hospitality industry in order to conduct competition analyses
• Tracking and forecasting revenue all while identifying potentially new revenue opportunities based on demand market trends
• Liaising and collaborating with the hotel sales’ team and hotel manager to create promotional plans and business plans

Key skills

Revenue managers require a wide range of both soft and hard skills, including:

• Business acumen and sales awareness
• Ability to motivate and manage a team while simultaneously driving to achieve goals and objectives
• Excellent analytical, numeracy, and computer literacy skills
• Communication – both verbal and written
• Organisational skills, including excellent time management and ability to meet pressing deadlines
   

Where to begin…

Relevant industry experience is essential if you want to work in the hospitality sector – regardless of which role.

The Institut Paul Bocuse is a world-renowned International school of Culinary Arts, Hospitality and Food Service Management. It offers a distinctive experiential learning environment designed specifically to provide a real-world pedagogical experience combining practice and theory to ensure a 360 degree exposure to the hospitality, food service and culinary arts fields.

Half of the Bachelor’s in International Hospitality Management programme involves gaining unique practical professional training in the school’s very own exclusive five-star hotel school (Le Royal MGallery by Sofitel) and six training restaurants – including a Michelin-star restaurant for students to put their new-found skills and knowledge to the test in real-life situations.

What’s more, specialised talent managers at the school are on hand to offer invaluable career support and advice to students throughout their studies. Bringing with them their expert knowledge of the hospitality sector – and as HR specialists – they work hard to bring out the best in students and equip them with the tools and confidence needed to get the right placement or job, whether it’s through recruitment workshops, personality tests, and coaching and personal branding classes.

Students have the opportunity to meet with over 800 leading partner company contacts, where they can speak to industry professionals in culinary arts, as well as the restaurant and hotel industries.

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Whether you’re still considering your degree options or you’re halfway through your studies, it’s likely you’ll be wondering how you can set yourself up for success in the industry right now.

The hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit industries as a result of the pandemic and so there will inevitably be challenges ahead. However, the need for a new generation of hospitality managers who are driven, motivated and qualified to navigate and steer business through such climates has never been more important – as is having an up-to-date awareness of industry and market trends.

Even the likes of Apple and UBS among other luxury retailers and global companies have been hiring fresh hospitality graduates over the last year, thanks to their transferable skillsets, demonstrated qualities and positive mindsets which are very much needed across all industries and sectors.

Lead image credit: Institut Paul Bocuse