ALWAYS PUT THE GUEST CENTRE STAGE
Dear Lusine, please tell us about your journey in hospitality industry. Why did you chose this field and what do you like most about it.
In school years, I thought that the future profession should be related to traveling and communicating with interesting people. As a result, fate itself decreed that I transferred from the faculty of linguistics and began to study my future profession, namely, tourism and hospitality management. On the second year of University I had an opportunity to internship in one of the best and hospitable countries in the world – in Greece. And it played such a vital role that I remained to work further in this industry. My all-time colleagues from Mouzenidis Travel laid the fundamentals in me that are so important in our business:
– Love everything you do!
– ALWAYS PUT THE GUEST CENTRE STAGE and we work in a way that our guests will go home with the best memories of the holiday.
What about sales? Give us your top 3 qualities that a person must have to succeed in sales department working for hotels.
I got to the sales department after having worked for some time in the Font Office. I believe that this is the surest way to further understand the work of all services in the hotel and generally get acquainted with the guests, their requests and wishes. For me, sales at the hotel is a separate chapter. Transferring to the sales department and having worked for a while, I realized that here I am ready to stay for many years. It is impossible to draw a parallel between the hotel sales and sales in any other industry. After all, the ideal salesperson in our field must grow in the hotel and know many details. The work in the sales department of the hotel allows you to develop and learn something new every day. Why? Our clients are representatives of almost all fields of activity and this is what makes my work so special.
I have the opportunity to study and learn how they work in the field of Atomic Energy, Banks, in the world of fashion, pharmaceuticals and much more.
Three qualities are very important in my work:
1. Proactivity in everything that you do
2. Love towards the product that you sell as well as to the work in general
3. Candidness and transparency
What are the responsibilities of your role in the company? Please describe your one day at work.
Since 2017, I was lucky enough to transfer to one of the world’s best companies in the industry of hospitality – the Radisson Hotel Group.
I work at the Global Sales Office and am a representative of the hotels of RHG company around the world.
Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world’s largest and most dynamic hotel groups with eight distinctive hotel brands with more than 1,400 hotels in destinations around the world. Our portfolio of hotel brands includes: Radisson Collection™, Radisson Blu®, Radisson®, Radisson RED®, Park Plaza®, Park Inn® by Radisson, Country Inn & Suites® by Radisson and prizeotel.
This was a new challenge for me and this is an absolutely new stage in my career. Explore a huge variety of directions and hotels, offer the client something unique, something that suits the company’s business goals at that period.
If we talk about one day of my work, it is always something new. Of course, my perfect morning should start with a cup of aromatic coffee. And right after coffee, start the journey on a new day: several meetings with different clients. The main tasks are to find out what would be interesting for my client to hold the next event for 10 or 100 or even up to 2000 people.
Next, I get in touch with colleagues around the world to offer the best option for my client.
And, of course, the work is accompanied by business trips, during which I get acquainted with both new countries and cities, and share experiences with colleagues from around the world.
As industry is changing rapidly with development of IT sphere. What is your vision of the future of our industry? How do you think will hotel experience look in the next years?
Nowadays we are witnessing a huge diversity in the hotel industry. There are underwater hotels, hotels in the center of the desert – the most interesting thing is that regardless of the location of the hotel, which is sometimes not quite simple, colleagues manage to offer the highest level of service.
Over the past years SMART technologies were fully implemented in the hospitality industry.
You have an opportunity to Check in at the hotel and get an electronic key, while you are going from the airport to the hotel, open your door using your mobile phone. The guest directory that is so familiar to many people is not a common thing to many hotels for already a long time; instead, you can ask for help to a virtual assistant who will tell you about hotel services in detail, help you order room service and tell you about local attractions.
Also there are more and more new technologies for Meetings and Events which really optimize recourses.
For me It is very important to keep hospitality basics in the century of IT technologies:
– ALWAYS PUT THE GUEST CENTRE STAGE
– Keep cozy atmosphere and always add something more to be memorable for the guests.