- Types of hospitality job
- What do hospitality jobs involve?
- Hospitality career paths
- Hospitality salaries
- Qualifications & training
- Hospitality skills
- Pros and cons of being in hospitality
- Work-life balance in hospitality
- Typical employers hiring in hospitality
- Related jobs to hospitality
- More information
Are you looking for a career with people at the heart of it? Do you have great organisation skills and love helping people? If you’re friendly and efficient, a career in hospitality could be for you.
Are you interested in working in hospitality? Explore the current customer, FMCG and retail jobs available now.
Types of hospitality job
The hospitality sector encompasses companies which provide customers with services like hotel stays, travel booking and food preparation to provide their leisure and recreational needs. Therefore, there are many jobs available in the sector, from waiting jobs to hotel management. Hospitality heavily revolves around the customer and your job is about making a customer feel welcomed and comfortable so they enjoy the experience. Here are some examples of the type of industries you could work in:
Hotel
Hotels are a major employer in the hospitality industry. You could work as reception staff, kitchen staff, cleaning staff or even in areas like interior design or gardening.
Event
Event planning is another large area of hospitality. You could plan events like weddings, funerals, parties and conferences. You could also work in the catering side, providing food for events or waiting in them.
Travel
In the travel industry, you could work as a travel agent, a tour guide or as a flight attendant.
What do hospitality jobs involve?
Due to how many possible jobs there are available in hospitality, the responsibilities you have vary significantly. The three main areas of work can be separated into customer service, food preparation and behind the scenes.
Customer service
Customer service jobs in hospitality include waiting staff, hotel receptionist, flight attendants, event planners, travel agents and many more. Here are the main responsibilities associated with the customer service side of hospitality:
- Communicating with customers
- Providing information about your services or the services of the company you work for
- Responding to complaints
- Cleaning workspaces and making sure the area is tidy for customers. For example, in a waiting job this means clearing and cleaning tables, and in a receptionist job this means dusting the front desk and tidying away any paperwork
- Taking payments from customers
Food preparation
Food preparation doesn’t usually involve much or any customer interaction meaning the responsibilities vary considerably from customer service jobs in hospitality. Food preparation could be working in a kitchen at a restaurant but it could also be making food for events or even preparing food on airplanes. Here are the responsibilities you have when working in food preparation:
- Making the food requested by customers
- Maintaining the standard set for food by senior staff members
- Keeping to safety regulations, for example making sure not to put knives in the sink and turning off the oven when not using it
- Keeping to hygiene regulation, for example thoroughly cleaning equipment and work surfaces, alongside disposing of food waste
- Keeping to food safety regulations, for example storing food safely and preventing cross contamination of uncooked meats with vegetables
- Keeping to allergen regulations, for example having specific work areas, chopping boards and knives for food containing allergens
Roles that aren’t customer-facing
Many jobs in hospitality don’t have a customer-facing role. This includes work in gardening, cleaning and transportation like pilots. Since speaking to customers isn’t typically a part of your daily work, here are the responsibilities that you might expect in behind the scenes hospitality jobs:
- Being an expert in your area, whether that is gardening, flying or cleaning
- Making sure you complete your tasks to the highest standard without disrupting the customers
- Doing your work with the customer in mind
Hospitality career paths
Since hospitality is such a wide industry, there are many career paths that you can go into. Here are some of the career paths open to you in hospitality:
Hotel
- Entry-level. Wait staff are an entry-level position in restaurants either in or out of hotels. In this role, you’re responsible for taking orders from customers, relaying orders to the kitchen staff, bringing food to customers and receiving payments. You clean the tables once customers are finished and make bookings on the phone or in person. Another entry-level hotel job is a receptionist. In this role, you take booking on the phone and in person, check guests in and out and answer any questions they have.
- Career progression. With experience and several steps between, you reach a management position. This could be restaurant manager or hotel manager depending on your career path and interests. As a manager, you oversee the running of the business, making sure that budgets are kept to and staff are working productively.
- Future career. If you work for a large company and have the required experience, you become head of hospitality. This means being a senior member of management staff, overseeing the work of your colleagues, hiring new employees and choosing the future direction of the business.
Event
- Entry-level. Assistant event planner is an entry-level job in event planning. In this role, you work with an event planner to make sure an event runs smoothly. The event planner delegates responsibilities to you which you complete in the time required.
- Career progression. Once you’ve got experience, you move up to an event planner or event manager. This role involves liaising with clients to understand their specific requirements for an event, planning how the event will go and managing the event when it happens.
- Future career. With lots of experience, you become a senior event manager. In this role you may oversee the planning of several events at a time making sure they run smoothly to the client’s requirements. You delegate responsibility and train new staff when they arrive.
Hospitality salaries
The average salary that you earn in hospitality depends on the industry and the level you’re working at. Here is what you might expect from three hospitality industries:
Hotel
- Entry-level wait staff earn reception an average of £9 an hour, as do hotel receptionists. This comes to around £18,000 per year
- Restaurant managers earn an average of £30,000 per year whereas hotel managers earn an average of £33,000 per year
- Senior positions like head of hospitality earn an average if £50,000 per year
Event
- Entry-level event staff, like assistant event coordinators, earn around £19,000 per year
- Event planners earn £30,000 per year on average
- Senior event managers earn an average of £43,000 per year which could increase to £60,000 depending on the scale of events
Qualifications and training
The level of education you need depends on the job and industry you’re interested in. If you’re looking to reach management level, here are the steps you should take:
Education
Having an undergraduate degree in hospitality helps you learn about the industry as a whole and what you can do to improve any business. Completing a degree isn’t always necessary but does teach you valuable skills and can get you into a graduate programme which fast tracks your career to management level.
Graduate programmes are intended for graduates intending to reach management level. They teach you the required skills whilst giving you the necessary experience through working in the industry.
Alternatively, there are many apprenticeships and diplomas you can complete if you're interested in gaining relevant experience and skills for management level jobs in hospitality. If you’re interested in an apprenticeship in hospitality, learn about the apprenticeships available now on the government's apprenticeship search tool.
If you want to work in food production, you need to complete food hygiene, food safety and allergen courses. Your workplace may pay for you to do this course or you could complete a diploma.
Hospitality skills
Working in hospitality requires a large number of skills which vary based on the industry and the level of employment that you’re at. Here are the transferable skills that are relevant to most hospitality jobs:
Soft skills
- Customer service. Even if you’re working in a behind the scenes job, you may still come across customers who you must interact with. Having great customer service skills means being friendly and helpful without being overbearing or dismissive. Your excellent customer service skills mean customers have a good time at your workplace and are more likely to come back.
- Resilience. Whilst most customers will be very friendly and nice, some are not so considerate. Being resilient means you can deal with the negative customers and not let them spoil your day.
- Teamwork. Working in hospitality is almost always a team effort. Working well with a team means you can get food out quickly, have rooms ready on time, plan a fantastic event and keep the customer happy.
Pros and cons of being in hospitality
Hospitality can be a friendly and welcoming environment to new colleagues. However, as anyone who has worked in hospitality will tell you, there are downsides to the work. Here is what you should consider before committing to your career in hospitality:
Pros
- It is a very social sector. You meet lots of people on a daily basis
- There are many career paths which you can explore depending on your skills and interests
- You may receive discounts for the company you work for and partnered companies
- There is often an option to travel
- It gives you lots of experience and you can use it to start your own business in the future
Cons
- You often deal with lots of customers in a day. This requires a high level of energy throughout your working day which can be draining. Some customers will be less friendly than others
- Need to reach high level jobs before you receive pay to match your work
- The hours you work aren’t always predictable and can change on a weekly basis
- Your workload may be influenced by things out of your control like the economy and time of year
- You probably have to do some weekend work
Work-life balance in hospitality
The work-life balance depends on the work you’re doing. One consistent factor about hospitality work is that customers require leisure at all times of the day and throughout the week. Unless your job is behind the scenes, you will most likely have evening or weekend work in your job. This can be problematic for maintaining a good work-life balance. However, the benefit of the industry is that there is often opportunity for overtime work but no requirement to do so as your tasks change on a daily basis unless you’re at management level.
Typical employers hiring in hospitality
So many well known companies have hospitality departments. These companies also make jobs available to recent graduates. Here are some companies that you could work for in hospitality:
Related jobs to hospitality
More information
If you’re interested in hospitality, explore the current hospitality jobs available right now.