The executive, or group, formulates policy and supervises the actions of the resident manager. Although mostly concerned with financial matters and the accounting of profits or losses, the executive branch will take part in operational functions when called upon by the resident manager, or when conditions arise to make intervention necessary.
The executive management also arranges for financing when needed, decides on important changes in operations, approves investments for improvement or other reasons, hires top personnel, and, in general, supervises all top-level operations. Resident managers may be appointed to an executive post. Quite commonly, members of the executive board are chosen from banks, insurance companies, or other business groups that have financial or other interests in the hotel. There is no one plan of action that can take you to this level.
Remuneration varies. Some executives represent the owners or investors and receive their incomes outside of the hotel. Others, such as the managing director or president, receive their incomes directly from the hotel. Their earnings may consist of straight salaries augmented by bonuses for profitable operation or a percentage of hotel profits.
A famous hotel consultant advises newcomers as follows:
In my experience in the hotel industry, I have become very sure that the industry offers a wide range of opportunities for an interesting and rewarding business career. To set aside, for the moment, the recognized fact that hotel employment offers the opportunity for a career generally without the boring aspects of many other careers, it also is true that numerous positions within the industry return to the individual monetary rewards ranging from fair to extremely good. Many years ago the rewards to be realized were limited but, particularly since the end of World War n, management, department heads, and section leaders have enjoyed an upgrading of their wage scales to a point never anticipated prior to 1940.
It is always a source of satisfaction to realize that so many of those in our industry who are in the better positions and enjoying the most worthwhile fruits of their efforts are those who started in the hotels in a fairly menial capacity and through effort and attention have accomplished a steady climb to the pivotal positions which they now hold.
I would not want to underrate in any way the fine education which is being given to young men and women in the hotel schools of the many colleges and universities throughout the country. We see these graduates coming along side by side with the career worker to occupy the managerial posts.
With the reality of the new aspect of luxury motels throughout this country, and now being felt by the industry abroad, a new facet of inn keeping is opening up to those who are willing to embrace inn keeping as a life's career. All of us find interest and excitement in constantly being exposed to new people and new schedules, and this, being the daily fare in hotel operation, offsets the fact that we who have followed hoteldom as a career have, because of the very nature of the business, set aside the importance of a scheduled workday and a scheduled workweek.
For a young person with initiative, intelligence, and the desire to get ahead-and a basic liking for humanity-the hotel industry offers the golden opportunity for an interesting and successful career.
Milton Kutscher, of the famed Kutscher's Country Club in Monte-cello, New York, has this to say about a hotel career:
The modern resort hotel exists only because it is today as necessary as home.
A strong statement? Perhaps, but if one thinks about home as a place to relax and enjoy oneself, and then thinks about the modern resort hotel as a place to relax and enjoy oneself, then we get a better idea of the place of the resort hotel in our mechanized culture. And from that, we get a better idea of the opportunities in today's modern resort industry.
The pace of the world of business and industry today makes vacations away from home a necessity. Wasn't it a doctor who coined the phrase, a change is as good as a vacation Tensions can far more easily be released in an unfamiliar, sometimes exotic atmosphere than at home.
What's more, salaried people nowadays have both the income and the time to get away-unlike a few decades ago when resort hotels were neighborhoods for the employer and well-to-do management. Add to this the ever-increasing tendency of large companies to hold off-season conventions at resort hotels and one begins to see the rosy dawn of a new lease on life for the modern resort industry.
Of course, none of this would still amount to a hill of beans if it weren't all brought together with modern, high speed transportation. What good the delights of the world if one has to spend all one's time getting there-not to mention getting back? So all of us in the modern resort industry owe a huge debt of gratitude to jets, super trains, buses, super highways, and the people who are planning to speed up even further these super-speedy ways of getting anywhere and back.
And then, there's advertising. Which, for better or for worse, tells the world what we've got to offer? Together we have something for everyone. Something wonderful, something beautiful, something exciting, something relaxing. Together, the millions of dollars we in the resort industry spend on advertising have crystallized the vacationing habits of America so that today the resort world is healthy, flourishing, and still young.
Doesn't it follow, then, that opportunity for executive and management personnel has grown to an unprecedented degree?
