Guest Services Manager

The hospitality world is one of the most exciting and dynamic industries out there. As a Guest Services Manager, you have front row seats to the show. You’re in charge of making sure that all of the guests at your hotel, resort, or convention center are 100 percent satisfied, 100 percent of the time.

To accomplish this goal, you work with the General Manager (GM) to address guest issues when and before they come up. And you’ll learn quickly that the latter is the easier path—the best way to deal with problems is by preventing them from happening. That’s why you hire and train only the best-qualified applicants. You coordinate with the GM and any other administrative personnel or oversight committees (for example, corporate compliance, etc.) to make sure that training and compliance are at or above mandated levels of quality, and that the staff conduct themselves in a manner in keeping with the organization’s goals and practices.

Even when you’ve trained your staff perfectly, though, your day will never be without its fair share of excitement. When you come on shift in the morning, you could find that half your staff is out with the flu, and you have to do some last-minute reshuffling of available workers, while calling in reserve team members (if there are any!). A big client could come in with many more associates than you had planned for, and expects them all to be fed.

These aren’t scenes from a comedy movie—these are your challenges. An experienced Manager will handle them all with a cool head and a steady hand. In other words, when a guest services issue comes up at your establishment, the buck stops with you. This means your job is to prepare for and solve those situations.

Guest Services Managers work in all sorts of settings: hotels, convention centers, resorts, golf clubs, casinos, and retreats. Anywhere people congregate for long periods of time and need hospitality services, there will be Guest Services Managers to make sure they’re happy.