The hospitality industry has faced challenging times recently, but as business rebounds, the competition for hiring hospitality staff is increasing. Within the hospitality sector, there are various positions available, including cleaners, caterers, porters, receptionists, personal trainers, event coordinators, and hotel managers.
Creating a comprehensive and effective hospitality job description requires outlining the necessary skills, work experience, and qualifications for the position. We suggest using a job description template to develop a well-crafted job description that can be transformed into an advertisement to be posted on popular job boards and professional networking sites.
What Do Hospitality Professionals Do?
When creating a job description for your hospitality, leisure, or tourism business, it is essential to outline the functions of the hospitality team and how they fit into your company culture. Careful hiring is necessary to ensure your business has the right mix of skills and experience for success in sales, customer service, catering, and leisure.
Depending on the products or services provided, tourism and hospitality employees may be responsible for implementing the hospitality management strategy, achieving sales targets, using relevant software, handling customer complaints, identifying promotional opportunities, ensuring safety standards in catering and food production, hiring and coaching staff members (for Hospitality Managers), performing administrative tasks, creating staff schedules, and managing budgets and finances.
Employees may oversee:
- Implementing the hospitality management strategy (Hospitality Manager)
- Sales and hitting profit targets
- Using relevant software such as EPOS and MS Office
- Handling customer complaints
- Spotting promotional opportunities
- Providing exemplary service to ensure customer satisfaction and the quality charter
- Ensuring safety norms are maintained (catering and food production)
- Hiring and coaching staff members (Hospitality Managers)
- Administrative tasks required for day-to-day operations
- Creating staff schedules
- Budgeting and financial management
Hospitality Positions and Titles
The tasks of hospitality sector professionals are completed by workers in roles titled as:
- Housekeeping
- Operations or Hospitality Manager
- Hotel Receptionist
- Cleaner
- Events Coordinator
- Personal trainer
- General Manager
Hospitality Responsibilities and Duties
The duties and responsibilities of a hospitality worker vary depending on their role, seniority, and the type of business they work for. These duties are essential and will likely determine the worker's job performance.
Hospitality, leisure, and tourism jobs can involve the following responsibilities and duties:
- Greeting guests
- Maintaining a professional demeanor at all times
- Operating an EPOS system for processing sales
- Answering phone calls and emails
- Creating staff schedules
- Coordinating with suppliers and contractors
- Restocking supplies
- Reporting maintenance issues and breakages
- Entering data into spreadsheets
- Managing budgets
- Handling customer complaints and ensuring guest satisfaction
- Developing or implementing management strategies
- Preparing high-quality food and drink in restaurants and pubs
- Serving customers in hotels, clubs, pubs, and restaurants
- Planning events
- Conducting performance reviews
- Training junior staff members
- Marketing restaurants, hotels, pubs, or leisure facilities
- Ensuring guest safety in swimming pools, bars, clubs, and leisure centers
- Achieving sales and profit targets
- Organizing room maintenance schedules
While these duties are generic, you can make them more engaging and meaningful by specifying how the responsibility should be achieved. For instance, "You will prepare high-quality food by maintaining safety standards and following the direction of the sous chef or head chef."
Essential Hospitality Skills
Hiring staff members with the right soft skills is crucial to ensure that your hospitality establishment adheres to best practices, meets sales targets, and carries out daily operations in accordance with standards and regulations.
Here are some of the skills that candidates need to possess for a hospitality, leisure, and tourism job:
- Strong communication skills
- Knowledge of health regulations and laws
- Proficiency in using computers and applications
- Numeracy and fluency in English; fluency in a second language can be beneficial
- Leadership skills and experience managing staff members (for Hospitality Managers/Leisure Club Managers)
- Sales and customer service skills
- Organizational and multitasking abilities
- Good time management skills
- Willingness to work long hours, evenings, and weekends
- Active listening
- Excellent interpersonal skills
- Good decision-making abilities
- Positive attitude
- Receptiveness to feedback
- Ability to work effectively in a team
- Strong problem-solving skills
- Stress management skills
- Objectivity
- Physical fitness
- Strong commitment to career development
- Awareness and adaptability
- Attention to detail
Hospitality Education and Qualifications
Employers might seek various education and qualifications depending on the sector, career, and level of seniority. Here are some examples:
- A Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Management, Hotel Management, or Hospitality Business Management
- Level 4 Diploma in Hospitality Leadership
- Level 3 Diploma in Hospitality Supervision and Leadership
- Personal Trainer Qualification
- Level 2 Certificate in Cleaning Principles
Hospitality Training and Experience
Having relevant work experience and training is advantageous when seeking employment in the hospitality, leisure, and tourism sectors. This may include prior experience in hospitality management (for managerial positions), proficiency in using MS Office and reservation systems, knowledge of health and safety regulations (including fire safety), as well as certification in CPR, AED, and First Aid.
Frequently Asked Questions about Hospitality Job Descriptions
Here we answer your hospitality job description frequently asked questions.