A long, hard road to become a GM

Six out of ten Middle East hotel GMs started their careers in hospitality as waiters, room clerks, busboys or kitchen porters, according to the findings of Hotelier Middle East’s GM Survey 2009.

And, on average, that journey from the bottom of the pile to the top of the tree took just over 17 years, although female GMs had to put in another two years hard graft to make the top position.

Along the way, GMs of course gain experience in a wide variety of different hotel departments.

Most popular is the food and beverage department, where 70% of GMs claimed to have worked at some point during their career. Almost 40% had worked in room reservations or reception, around 30% had experience in the sales & marketing department and equal numbers – a shade over 11% – worked in housekeeping or finance.

The least popular departments were HR, recreation and leisure - less than 10% of hotel general managers had experience of working in these departments.